Agent
Agent
A sterile room, barely larger than an elevator. The walls are beige tending to grey. The fluoro lights make the capillaries in their eyes pop, the dark circles sink into their cheeks.Two chairs. Two men. One table.The one with the grey flecks in his hair is standing. He has dark jeans and a black tee shirt with a single green hand printed on the front. The severed hand reaches and claws, rendered in blocky pixels. The print is fractured with wear and flaking.“So, this is the guy that’s going to be me while I’m doing the thing?”The other man sits, resting his folded arms on the table. His tracksuit is deep blue and loose. Spotless. There is a patch of plastic taped to the top of his stubbly head. He looks bored.“He is the agent,” came the voice from the wall.“But he doesn’t look like me at all,” complained the standing man. His words die to be replaced by the near-silence of air conditioning and transformer hum.“Just sit down, Huck,” said the track-suited man. “They’ll take care of all this before I take your place.” He flapped his hands at his face. “They start with the top and work down.”Huck approached the man but stood behind his chair, grabbing the back rest. He leaned heavily and rocked the chair so that it pawed at the ground like a nervous animal.“What more do you want? I’ve done a billion questionnaires, personality test and associations. I’ve given you everything from my first memories to the colour of my shit last Thursday morning. I’ve told you about my work colleagues, the students in my classes, my family, my pets, my neighbours, my neighbours’ pets…”“Huck, please,” the other man’s foot had found the seat of the rocking chair and slowly pressed down until all four legs settled on the ground. “Just sit down and talk to me.”A long stare. The background thrum. Huck eventually puts his butt into the chair, making sure to twist until his back pops and creaks before resigning himself fully to the seat.“Huck, I don’t need any information from you,” practiced patience in the man’s voice. “I’ve just got to talk to you. I’ve got to read you.”“What do you mean?”“I need to get a better sense of how you move your face. What you do when you are happy. How you are now, when you are annoyed.”“Well, you’re not likely to get ‘happy’ from me today,” Huck spat.“You’re wrong, Huck.” Without breaking eye contact, the man in the blue tracksuit twisted as Huck had, extracting a similar level of spluttering complaint from his spine. “Huck, you’re giving it to me right now. I don’t need long, just enough to get a first-hand sense of your timing, your internal tensions and how they play out through your face and body. You don’t have to be any particular emotional state for me to read your potential for glee, delight, ecstasy or that pedestrian state of happiness you’re determined not to be in. It’s recorded in the architecture of your face.“You don’t even need to talk. It’s all there; as you are listening you are associating, whether you want to or not. You are dipping between de-coding and remembering. How often you swap between these states, how long you stay in each of them is traced out by the movement of your eyes, the twitching of your body and the creases etched in your head. I just need enough time with you to decide between that which is habitual and those actions that are reactions to this situation.”Huck’s ears had flushed. This was the closest thing to blushing he had experienced in years. The man in the blue tracksuit was making his chair look like a couch while Huck was making his own look like a stove top. They stayed that way for some time. Huck seemed determined to resist scrutiny while his tiniest squirming’s seemed to be feeding the man in the tracksuit so that he became ever larger and more relaxed in the small room.“We’re done here,” the blue tracksuit man said, abruptly.“What? What do you mean we’re done? I haven’t said anything!”The blue tracksuit man rose effortlessly.“There’s no point me explaining myself a second time, Huck.” He made his way to the door, pausing on his way out.“You’re not special, Huckleberry, they just need you for this one job. If you fuck this up then your broken body will be shoved into a rolled car somewhere between Canberra and Sydney at three in the morning. Everyone will be shocked and saddened but not surprised and I’ll be off your couch and cycled back into the program.“Do your job. Don’t fuck it up, Huck.”The door closed. Huck deflated into his chair. The transformer hum of the fluoro lights didn’t warm him.
(picture to come)
A sterile room, barely larger than an elevator. The walls are beige tending to grey. The fluoro lights make the capillaries in their eyes pop, the dark circles sink into their cheeks.Two chairs. Two men. One table.The one with the grey flecks in his hair is standing. He has dark jeans and a black tee shirt with a single green hand printed on the front. The severed hand reaches and claws, rendered in blocky pixels. The print is fractured with wear and flaking.“So, this is the guy that’s going to be me while I’m doing the thing?”The other man sits, resting his folded arms on the table. His tracksuit is deep blue and loose. Spotless. There is a patch of plastic taped to the top of his stubbly head. He looks bored.“He is the agent,” came the voice from the wall.“But he doesn’t look like me at all,” complained the standing man. His words die to be replaced by the near-silence of air conditioning and transformer hum.“Just sit down, Huck,” said the track-suited man. “They’ll take care of all this before I take your place.” He flapped his hands at his face. “They start with the top and work down.”Huck approached the man but stood behind his chair, grabbing the back rest. He leaned heavily and rocked the chair so that it pawed at the ground like a nervous animal.“What more do you want? I’ve done a billion questionnaires, personality test and associations. I’ve given you everything from my first memories to the colour of my shit last Thursday morning. I’ve told you about my work colleagues, the students in my classes, my family, my pets, my neighbours, my neighbours’ pets…”“Huck, please,” the other man’s foot had found the seat of the rocking chair and slowly pressed down until all four legs settled on the ground. “Just sit down and talk to me.”A long stare. The background thrum. Huck eventually puts his butt into the chair, making sure to twist until his back pops and creaks before resigning himself fully to the seat.“Huck, I don’t need any information from you,” practiced patience in the man’s voice. “I’ve just got to talk to you. I’ve got to read you.”“What do you mean?”“I need to get a better sense of how you move your face. What you do when you are happy. How you are now, when you are annoyed.”“Well, you’re not likely to get ‘happy’ from me today,” Huck spat.“You’re wrong, Huck.” Without breaking eye contact, the man in the blue tracksuit twisted as Huck had, extracting a similar level of spluttering complaint from his spine. “Huck, you’re giving it to me right now. I don’t need long, just enough to get a first-hand sense of your timing, your internal tensions and how they play out through your face and body. You don’t have to be any particular emotional state for me to read your potential for glee, delight, ecstasy or that pedestrian state of happiness you’re determined not to be in. It’s recorded in the architecture of your face.“You don’t even need to talk. It’s all there; as you are listening you are associating, whether you want to or not. You are dipping between de-coding and remembering. How often you swap between these states, how long you stay in each of them is traced out by the movement of your eyes, the twitching of your body and the creases etched in your head. I just need enough time with you to decide between that which is habitual and those actions that are reactions to this situation.”Huck’s ears had flushed. This was the closest thing to blushing he had experienced in years. The man in the blue tracksuit was making his chair look like a couch while Huck was making his own look like a stove top. They stayed that way for some time. Huck seemed determined to resist scrutiny while his tiniest squirming’s seemed to be feeding the man in the tracksuit so that he became ever larger and more relaxed in the small room.“We’re done here,” the blue tracksuit man said, abruptly.“What? What do you mean we’re done? I haven’t said anything!”The blue tracksuit man rose effortlessly.“There’s no point me explaining myself a second time, Huck.” He made his way to the door, pausing on his way out.“You’re not special, Huckleberry, they just need you for this one job. If you fuck this up then your broken body will be shoved into a rolled car somewhere between Canberra and Sydney at three in the morning. Everyone will be shocked and saddened but not surprised and I’ll be off your couch and cycled back into the program.“Do your job. Don’t fuck it up, Huck.”The door closed. Huck deflated into his chair. The transformer hum of the fluoro lights didn’t warm him.
(picture to come)
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