by Luiza Sauma
‘Smells a bit in here,’ said Alison, wrinkling her nose. ‘So disgusting – doing number twos at work.’
‘You think so?’ said Iris.
‘There’s a time and a place.’
‘What if you really need to go?’
‘You just hold it in!’ Alison pursed her mouth and widened her eyes, as if she suspected Iris of being a flagrant work-shitter, which she was. Maybe it was the secret to Alison’s success – abstaining from shitting. She was three years older than Iris and earned twice as much. She had a husband, a baby and a house. She was disliked by almost everyone at Freedom & Co, but she successfully performed an impression of competence for Roger, which was all that mattered.
Alison covered her nose with her hand. ‘Anyway, how did it go with Eddie?’
‘It went well. He was really apologetic about the things he messed up.’
She nodded energetically. ‘What was his excuse?’
‘He said he was feeling burnt out.’
‘Ha! Come off it. Like he even does a fraction of what we do. I was working till one in the morning last night, in bed, and then I was in the office at seven.’
‘Wow.’ Iris pictured Alison typing furiously into a laptop as her husband tried to sleep. ‘You must be tired.’
‘I’m fine, I. Unlike Eddie, I can take it.’ Alison had shortened Iris’s name to ‘I’ in the last few weeks, a sure sign that she saw her as slightly superior to the other workers. ‘I’m not expecting him to work as hard as me. But he’s having a nervous breakdown? Please!’
‘I don’t think it’s that bad. He made a couple of mistakes, but he’s really sorry and wants to make a new start.’
Alison smiled indulgently. ‘He’s lucky to have you as his manager.’ She touched Iris’s arm. Her hand felt hard, like wood. ‘You’re really kind, I. Maybe too kind.’
‘Uh, thanks.’
‘Also, how are you getting on with the Project Salmon strategy?’
‘Project Salmon?’ Iris said it slowly, hoping to jog her own memory. There was Project Ground Zero, Project Elephant, Project Sapling. Which one was Salmon? ‘I’m on it. It’ll be with you next week.’
‘Brilliant. Maybe by tomorrow morning, though?’
‘Sure.’
It was now past 5 p.m., but Alison would definitely forget the new deadline.
‘Excellent. I just want to read it over the weekend, to get ahead of things.’ Alison looked at her phone and sighed. ‘Well, I have another meeting. I’ll leave first, otherwise it might look a bit weird.’
‘I was coming to the loo anyway, so I’ll just stay.’
Alison frowned. ‘This loo is for disabled people, I. It’s not fair to use it.’
Before Iris could reply, Alison marched out of the toilet. Iris locked the door behind her and took a huge, serendipitous shit.
Back at her desk, in the white-walled, open-plan office, she checked her personal emails first. There was a message from a shoe shop. Subject line: ‘We miss you.’ No, you don’t, she thought, and unsubscribed. There was also an email from Kiran, asking her to buy olive oil and toilet paper on the way home. She addressed Iris as ‘Dearest’ and signed off with ‘Love you’, as if they were a couple.
Several messages appeared on the screen in quick succession:
Jenny
Sup everyone? Drink tonight? Thursday’s the new Friday?
Rich
yes, please
Eddie
I’m meeting someone, but I can come for one
Jenny, Rich and Eddie sat at the same bank of desks as Iris. Other colleagues could always tell that they were messaging each other because their breathing became punctuated with small, amused sighs.
Jenny
Meeting someone? A womaaaan?!
Eddie
Yes, my sister
Jenny
Boring
Iris had been included in the group chat since the Christmas party, which had started with lunch and ended with the four of them doing MDMA and singing karaoke till 4 a.m. It was nice being included, but Iris wondered if it was bad for her career to be so open and friendly with colleagues. Better to stay distant and unknowable, like Roger, or crazy and unlikeable, like Alison.
Jenny
Iris? Up for it?
Iris didn’t answer for a minute – she didn’t want to seem overeager. She searched for emails in her inbox that mentioned ‘Project Salmon’, in case they included any clues. There were sixty-seven results. Fuck it, she thought.
Iris
Yeah, I think I can come.
Jenny
Yay!!
Iris had no plans beyond buying olive oil and toilet paper, but it was always good to sound a bit unsure and unavailable.
Rich
eden?
Jenny
Too early in the year for Eden. Still skint from Christmas
Rich
yeah, you’re right
Hierarchies shifted in the group chat. Though Jenny was the most junior of the four, and the newest employee, she called the shots. She was formidably confident, both glamorous and messy; her dyed red hair looked like it had been whipped up in a storm and she often stank of sweat, but sweetly.
Eddie
Pub?
Jenny
Yes!
Rich
great
Iris
Sounds good.
As Iris typed her response, she noticed that the program automatically capitalized the first letter of each sentence, which meant that Rich was manually changing his capitals to lower-case letters. It gave his messages a quiet, pared-back poetry. He was the oldest member of the group – thirty years old – and Freedom & Co’s only black employee. Agency staff tended to be homogeneous and interchangeable, a truth they contested on their website’s zany ‘team’ page, on which everyone shared a fun fact – their favourite ‘freedom fighter’. Roger’s was Che Guevara. Alison’s was Gandhi. All the obvious ones were taken by the time Iris joined the company. After cruising Wikipedia for five minutes, she chose Spartacus.
Jenny
Let’s leave one by one, so that people don’t know we’re going out. I can’t deal with anyone else today
Rich
cool
Jenny
I’ll go first
Iris
I have some more work to do – I’ll see you in a bit.
Eddie
Ok
Rich
btw, did u guys see this? just launched today http://www.lifeonnyx.com
A few minutes passed.
Eddie
Pretty cool!
Rich
amazing huh, maybe i’ll apply
Jenny
Ok I’m leaving now!
Before she left the office, Iris skim-read dozens of emails about Project Salmon. Each message seemed more indecipherable than the last. She was so bored and tired that the words seemed to dance around the screen, blurring into a cloud of nonsense.
actionable insights dynamic, holistic social
cut up the data in new ways self-curated web experience
granular detail multi-platform synergies
stats should tell a story
harness the brand opportunity
swim against the tide!
It was like being a detective, but instead of solving a murder, she was trying to work out what she did for a living. She opened a new Word document, wrote a title at the top, then underlined and bolded it:
Project Salmon: Digital Strategy
The others were at the pub. They thought Iris was a workaholic, but it was all a ruse – she didn’t know what she was doing. She added ‘Project Salmon’ to her to-do list. It wouldn’t take long to whip up a little strategy in the morning, even if she didn’t understand what it was for. As long as she used lots of buzzwords and phrases – the more obscure, the better – Alison was sure to be impressed.
She turned off her computer, stood up and took her coat off its hook. The offi
ce was still half full. As she walked out, she saw one of her colleagues, Mark, shaking his head at her, disapproving yet triumphant. He was one step closer to being the martyr of the day, the hardest worker, the purest of them all.
Outside, the winter air was cool and fresh against her damp, hot face. Iris felt like a bag of flour, heavy and dull. Bar a few meetings, she had sat at her desk for ten hours. A better person would have gone to the gym to make up for it, but she wasn’t a better person. Alcohol worked faster than exercise.
‘You’re here!’ shouted Jenny from a booth in the corner of the pub.
Iris composed her face into a thrilled grin. ‘Yay!’ she said.
Jenny stood and put her arm around her, as if they were BFFs who had been parted for several years. It made Iris feel both loved and uncomfortable. She wished she were more into hugging. She hadn’t been raised that way. Her mother hadn’t hugged her in years. Eddie and Rich glanced at her and nodded, but they were deep in conversation, their eyes bright and involved.
‘Drink, anyone?’ said Iris. Her skin seemed to be vibrating on the left side of her body, where Jenny was touching her.
‘Just got a round,’ said Jenny.
Finally, Iris was released and went to the bar. She returned with a pint of pale ale and two packets of salt and vinegar crisps.
‘What are you talking about?’ she said, as she ripped open one of the packets and laid it on the table. ‘Help yourselves.’
Everyone took a few crisps.
‘You know that link I sent you?’ said Rich.
‘I didn’t get a chance to look at it.’
‘It’s this project to send people to live on Nyx – you know, the planet?’
Four years earlier, the Nyx landings had been a sensation – the greatest breakthrough in space travel since Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon. Sometimes the Nyxians, as they called themselves, appeared in the news – but not often. Their contact with Earth was sporadic, for technical reasons.
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Iris, ‘I think I saw something on Twitter about that. Aren’t there people already living there?’
‘Yeah, but they’re all scientists,’ said Rich. ‘They want to send a hundred people – normal people. Applications opened today.’
‘A multi-platform social experiment,’ said Jenny, doing air quotes. ‘That’s how they described it on the radio this morning.’
Iris sipped her beer. It tasted like hope and joy, like relief.
‘The catch is that you can never come back to Earth,’ said Rich.
She looked up, suddenly interested. ‘Never?’ The cold beer slipped down her throat too fast. She burped quietly into her fist.
‘Yeah, like the original Nyxians. There’s still no way back. You spend your whole life up there. It’s something to do with the wormhole – it only goes one way.’ He laughed. ‘It’s pretty wild.’
‘Cray-cray,’ said Jenny. ‘Who the hell would sign up for that?’
‘Did you see the pictures?’ said Rich. ‘That Hub place looks incredible.’
Jenny rolled her eyes. ‘It looks like a cross between an Airbnb and a luxury spa.’
‘Exactly!’ Eddie laughed. ‘The millennial dream.’
‘They’ve already had 10,000 applications in one day,’ said Rich, ‘so obviously a lot of people want to go.’
‘Ten thousand people out of seven billion,’ said Jenny. ‘That’s nothing. Ten thousand suicidal lunatics – and that’s a tiny percentage of all the lunatics on Earth.’
Everyone went silent. Jenny always went too far. She combed her fingers through her hair. Her red lipstick was smudged. Eddie opened the second packet of crisps.
‘I’m not saying I would go,’ said Rich. ‘I mean, my mum would actually kill me. But it sounds pretty good – living in a commune, growing your own food, not just wasting your life looking at crap on a screen.’
‘Hmm, I dunno.’
‘Look at Earth, man. Look at Britain and the US, the Middle East. Look at Eddie over there, checking Twitter on his phone, even though we’re all trying to have a conversation.’
Eddie looked up sheepishly. ‘I’m just texting my sister –’
‘There’s no history up there. Everything starts at zero.’
‘I’d rather, like, move to the countryside or something,’ said Jenny.
‘Yeah, of course you would.’
‘The way Rich is describing it,’ said Iris, ‘it does sound kind of appealing. You wouldn’t have to worry about your future, about making the right choices, having the right job. Everything would be taken care of. And it’s a beautiful planet, from what I’ve seen.’
‘You big weirdos,’ said Jenny. ‘Why would you want to leave Earth?’
‘I’m not saying I’d go,’ said Rich. ‘I’m saying I get it.’
‘Look at this,’ said Jenny, gesturing at the room. The pub was packed with the after-work crowd: men in suits who worked in the City, men in casual clothes who worked in tech, a few women. A dozen people were crowded around the bar, waiting to be served. ‘We’re some of the luckiest people on Earth.’
‘Why,’ said Iris, ‘because we’re at the pub?’
‘Exactly. We’re free.’
Eddie glanced at Iris. ‘Life’s hard. Who doesn’t feel like running away sometimes?’
‘Our lives aren’t hard,’ said Jenny. ‘Come on.’
Iris’s eyes suddenly tingled with self-pity. She felt as if she were drowning in the stale pub air. She blinked until the feeling passed. It came, it went. Nobody noticed, nobody knew. It was ridiculously easy, hiding herself. Painful, but easy. Her greatest gift. Even she didn’t know who she really was: the fun, capable colleague, or the revolting madwoman lurking under the surface. There was no singularity, no undeniable truth, no middle ground. She felt both sane and deranged, joyful and miserable, competent and crippled.
Jenny picked up Rich’s packet of tobacco from the table and started rolling a cigarette.
‘Yes, you may have one,’ he said.
‘I knew you’d say yes.’ Jenny gave him a wink.
They went outside to smoke. Iris stayed inside with Eddie. The pub was getting rowdy. The air felt steamy and blurred. They had to lean into each other to be heard, but half the time they just pretended to hear. It was getting embarrassing saying over and over again: What? Sorry? What? Sorry? What?
But then Iris heard Eddie say, quite clearly, ‘Thanks for earlier!’
‘The probation?’
‘Yeah.’ His smile was ingratiating.
‘No worries.’
Is that the only reason he’s nice to me, she thought, because I’m his line manager? Probably. It would make sense. That was the only reason she was nice to Alison, after all. Perhaps Eddie sees me in the same way – his annoying, ridiculous boss.
‘I know these things can be awkward,’ he said. ‘Especially when –’
She missed the rest of the sentence because of the noise. People were shouting, clinking glasses, doing shots.
‘Sorry, what?’
Two men were standing near their table with their arms slung around each other, blazers off, ties askew, celebrating the near-end of another week. Soon the weekend would come and time would briefly belong to them – more or less, apart from the regular checking of emails. I’m projecting my feelings, thought Iris. They probably love their jobs. They’re nothing like me.
‘Especially when –’
Eddie’s warm breath was in her ear. She thought she would like to kiss him. How unprofessional. But still, it would be easy, just to turn her head and feel his breath on her lips, instead.
‘Sorry, I can’t hear you,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry.’ He grimaced. ‘Shall we go outside?’
That’s all it took to make someone feel unhappy on Earth – not being heard in a noisy, dark room. No wonder people always pretended to hear each other. It was a lovely white lie, the idea that someone was always intently listening. Iris and Eddie left their coats
in the booth so nobody would take their seats, and squeezed their way through the crowd. They would be cold, but losing their seats would be worse. Outside, Jenny and Rich were rolling more cigarettes. They were wearing their coats, which made Iris feel even colder. Eddie was shivering, too. Iris never bought tobacco these days, because she had officially given up. Eddie knew this, so he handed her his packet before she even asked.
‘Jenny told me this weird story,’ said Rich.
‘Oh God!’ said Jenny, covering her face. ‘I’ve been biting my tongue ever since I joined Freedom. I’m so sorry.’
‘What is it?’ said Eddie.
‘It’s horrible. I don’t want to put everyone on a downer.’
It was so unlike her to hold back. Iris was genuinely curious.
‘Seriously, it’s not even a story. It’s just that I used to work with someone who had Rich’s name.’
‘You used to work with someone called Rich?’ said Eddie. ‘Cool story, bro.’
‘No, no. His whole name. At my last agency, there was a guy called Richard Wolfson.’
‘It’s a Jewish name, isn’t it, Wolfson?’ said Iris, only just realizing it.
‘Yeah, my great-grandfather was Jewish, I think. Someone way back.’
‘What was so special about this other Richard Wolfson?’ said Eddie.
‘He killed himself,’ said Jenny.
‘Fuck.’
Iris wanted to know more. ‘That’s terrible. Was it recently?’
Jenny bit her red lips and nodded. Her eyes filled with tears. Iris put her arm around her, which felt strange and forced, but Jenny didn’t flinch at all.
‘That’s why I left.’ She exhaled a grey plume of smoke. ‘That’s why so many of us left. Only senior management stayed. No one else could take it. It changed the mood of the place. Everyone wanted to get the hell out.’
‘How awful,’ said Iris. She hadn’t tried to kill herself since she was sixteen, but she thought about it almost every day. Whenever she heard about a suicide, she wanted to hear everything – their age, their level of success, their note, their method – but she had learned to hide this morbid obsession, because it creeped people out. ‘Were you close to him?’