Vera's brief passage through the drab rear display area was like a short-lived refit. A stylish jolt of grey streaks and advanced slashed orange that brought the Conglomerate Department store to life. Knowing that I had to make contact, I intercepted her just before she got to the counter. Vera complained to me of a malfunctioning printer, still under warranty.

         Checking some hard copy documentation in the dusty filing cabinets in a corner of the back storeroom, I began to profile Vera. Seventy something, a big spender as things go, old fashioned and idiosyncratic enough to still always pay by cash. It was my last day there. Our kind can't work for too long with the rank and file; only occasionally save on wages. Concentration can flag when it comes to tasks outside the Craft. As our kind lose focus, sheer flatness of personality might arouse suspicion, and our kind are better off avoiding lunch rooms. Returning swiftly to the counter before she talked to anyone else, I arranged to visit Vera the next day on the pretext of a home service.

         She watches me now, in her home office. With as much theatre as I can muster, I make a show of pulling out and examining the ink cartridge. When Vera clacks out into her shiny dining room offering drinks, I enter a code. The code is for a fortnight-only reactivation, by which time I will be another long-gone transient worker at the store, interesting only for having made an unauthorised call-out. Before I started work on the printer, I had asked for Vera's receipt. Now, from the drawer from which she took it, I add Vera's other fading proofs of purchase. Swiftly, I fold the documents into my unoccupied left shirt pocket.  

         “Goodbye Vera,” I call out as I head for the door. “Should be fine now.” On the veranda, as I close the door behind me, I turn the ridged newish knob hard in the wrong direction. The metal components inside give a little. The internal mechanisms wear in a certain way, and will soon need to be replaced. Sooner now...

         The most noticeable increase in our kind's strength comes from implants in the hands. For breaking. Yet even my hands look natural enough. Generally the appearance of our kind is unremarkable, if a little gaunt. Only subtleties in gait and demeanour allow our kind to recognise each other. That happens now. Such sightings are not frequent, and I cross the road, glad to be distracted from my tasks.

         “How goes your practice of the Craft?” inquires the other. The standard greeting.        

         “Nothing lasts forever.” The standard reply.

       “Have you heard that one of our kind has been returned? For causing too much suspicion.”

         “I’m too old. I remember nothing.” The standard valediction. Normally our kind would exchange further information and perhaps share Religious reflections. But I am starting to feel a little run down, and she, too, looks in need of a good feed.

         Into an abandoned lot now. A dumped washing machine provides a suitable backdrop. With things breaking down so fast, the Conglomerate needs ways to stem the deluge of warranty claims. Vera could get a new TV, computer or kettle, right when the warranty is due to expire. It must be stopped where possible, especially as electronic records make it easier for customers to get undeserved goods. In cash cases like Veraʼs, 'warranty aping' remains worthwhile. Making the correct intonations and then doing the prescribed jig, I light a fire in a weedy concrete corner. It thrills me as carbon copy almost instantly disintegrates into fine soot.

         Two blocks later and my second client of the day. Faheem answers the door and greets me cheerily through a too-healthy jet black beard. One look at his overalls tells me he’s been working in the garden. This is my main concern with Faheem, just as the receipts were with Vera. Faheem had been contacted when I infiltrated the Woolloongabba gardening group. Algorithms suggested grow-it-yourself food posed a problem for a local supermarket, part of the Conglomerate.

         Once a client is contacted, the contact is pursued only if a main concern can be established. What else is feasible depends on how closely clients are watching. Place nearer to table or bench edges breakables made by members of the Conglomerate, hoping for quicker sales of sauces, glassware or electronic goods. Our kind are the eyes, ears and empowered fingers of a certain Chamber of Commerce. Nothing more. Nothing less.        

         “Check out what I’m growing,” Faheem gravely enthuses. He leads me out into his long narrow garden, full of the deep greens that shoot through this subtropical city. The usual stuff: basil, mint, rosemary. I’m surprised to see carrots, and Faheem notices.

         “Don’t cost much and keep well in plastic bags,” Faheem concedes in his friendly growl. “But... not too hard to grow, and could save a buck or two.” These words cause me to stiffen in disgust. All I can think is that Faheem is a cheapskate. Also, though, I am a little disconcerted by my own reaction, becoming uncomfortably aware that I am reprogrammed to fight a struggle in the realm of minutia.

         It’s the more expensive type of vegetable I’m after. Like tomatoes, retailing almost as luxury goods at Conglomerate supermarkets. Or eggplants and capsicum, slightly harder to grow and representing a damaging saving in favour of the consumer. Faheem leads me straight to my targets.

         “Going well since I saw you last,” he gestures in gruff satisfaction, and I automatically bristle at how well. The vegetation borders on luxuriant. But I perceive healthy plants as shocking outgrowths: diseased weeds, deformities, over insistent and perversely hued. Not for the first time, I also perceive this response as replacing an altogether different reaction.

         “Good work, Faheem.” My words flutter unconvincingly as Faheem turns to pull a spade from the ground. The timing is perfect. There is a long thin tube running under my right sleeve. Squeezing a soft pouch of strong herbicide sacked in my right chest pocket, I manage to get the stuff close to most of the offending roots. Behind me, Faheem gives a short affable laugh. Glancing over my shoulder, I see him turf a black cat out of a wheelbarrow. He is unaware of what I’ve just done.

         A face now flashes in the shabby glasshouse at the end of the yard. Like Faheem, the face wears a beard. Sadly disapproving, it seems to be a fuller version of my own face, though I am clean-shaven.

         “See you, then, Faheem,” I say as I back guiltily away through the stumps of his old wooden house.

         “Oh...OK, so youʼre not sticking around for a beer? Iʼm done now.” At the gardening group it became apparent that Faheem liked to consume home brew with other men, and it was on this basis that I was first invited to his house. Today I twist my face and touch the middle of my chest to indicate I am not feeling well. A peremptory wave and I scurry away. The discomforting awareness of what I now am is not usually so severe as to induce hallucinations, and Religion dictates that when this happens I take a break from the Craft. Most of my tasks are done anyway. Our kind truly are the enemy.  

#

         Not too far away, I have been allocated a utility space. After seeing the bearded apparition in Faheem’s glasshouse, I return to its dust motes. The walls are unadorned except for the sacred number, which is reassuring in its sprayed curves and triple beckoning tail. Religion helps me relax, giving me a feeling of belonging, reminding me that I am not alone in my hidden service of necessity and practice of the Craft. I am part of a larger recognition of what must be done.

        Future Dreaming can beset our kind in a run down state, and can accompany flash backs. Future Dreaming happens to me now. As always my mind is confronted by a series of unknown devices that fit into each other, allowing a range of multi-functions and replaceable parts. Then comes the Vision of the Resin. Squirted over kitchen surfaces as a cleaning liquid, it hardens quickly and then peels away, taking with it scraps and grime. Somehow I know the resulting scrappy resin is biodegradable and useful as fertiliser. Last, as always, comes feverish images of thriving organic crops amid rude and composting casts of kitchen benches and stove tops. 

         Religion is a support during these strange times. It tells us that Future Dreaming is the opposite reaction to our kind's  immersion in the Craft. It tells us to ignore the disquieting, utopian visions. These are chimera, dangerous if taken to be anything other than phantasms. The reality is that all is destroyed, devoured in an endless circular movement. The Craft is our kind's part of the eternal cycle.   

         Beside such profound lessons, Religion also imparts humility, guiding the practice of the Craft. For instance it is Religion that reminds us that the really great discoveries have already been made. It was truly a Great who long ago discovered that customers use product more carelessly if they buy a twin pack. The Great's name and one time position is a secret known only to certain initiates. One day I hope to become such an initiate, and I am proud of the extent to which I am proficient in the practice of the Craft.

         Later, rested and having managed to find some food, I pass a public drinking fountain. My memory jolts enough for a back story. Bottlers of water in the Conglomerate failed to orchestrate a reduction in state funding for these drinking utilities. For now our kind jam something down the bubbler itself, or clear away any shade so that the water is often too warm to be drinkable. Approaching the execrable thing now, I do what has to be done…

         For a while, our kind were required to sabotage parked bicycles. Sharing scheme cycles hoisted up trees, that was our kind's invisible hands at play. Once I was discovered in an act of sabotage. Two men came upon me hammering with a mallet at the spokes of a new mountain bike.

         “What the hell?!” one demanded aggressively. They were far enough away for me to drop the mallet and run. Our kind's major motor implants are low powered compared to the servo units you find in the combat armour that the Conglomerate has also developed. In fact, partly, our kind serve as experiments in certain forms of heightened motor function, as well as programming.  As one particularly knowledgeable in the Craft, let me explain further.

         Higher energy throughput can mean reduced durability. This is how a Conglomerate member ensures a more reasonable life expectancy for the torch bulbs they manufacture, and indeed for torches when the bulb cannot easily be replaced. The torch runs unneeded power through the filament. The manufacturer has the excuse of a little extra light. In fact the extra energy mainly converts to heat, destroying the filament in the medium term. By contrast, in addition to being inconspicuous, our implants are durable and efficient. Unusual limb movement is neither impossible nor tiring. Given some traction I can crawl on a ceiling.

         Running from the two men, it was easy for me to scale a wall, scurry across a roof, then climb a further surface face first, regaining two legs on the run. As I almost flew up that first wall, twisting limbs finding nooks and crannies, all I heard from behind me were gasps of disbelief.

         Today, the car manufacturing and energy factions of the Conglomerate employ subtler methods to depress bike use. For instance Conglomerate media outlets report bike road rage incidents in favour of the motorist. But it’s not the occasional street operation that's the real problem. Our kind once went to secret depots and there received dog food and the like. Later the Conglomerate realised that reliance on any provided sustenance requires additional cost and a risky point of contact. Able to metabolise even vermin, our kind are now mainly self-sufficient. The problem is of course finding and catching such fare.

#

At a cafe, and I meet Megumi. Sometimes our kind are directed to initiate contact with an individual client, and that's what I'm doing now. It had been a haphazard process. Using predicted consumption patterns, I waited outside certain stores, hoping to ask Megumi directions. To solidify the contact I intended to casually remark that I had just returned a high-maintenance coffee machine, the same model, that, with my access to information used by algorithms, I knew she had purchased. There was only ever a small window of opportunity since always being where she was shopping would have soon aroused suspicion. And it was pure luck that Megumi agreed to meet after so short an exchange around so impersonal a matter. Now, gazing at the bobbed dyed auburn framing her accepting smile, I feel a prickling shame.

         Focussing on what must be done, I manage to do more than just override the feeling. It is known to me that Megumi consumes Judo feeds. Such interests can pose a problem since our kind can find it very difficult to concentrate on anything too involved outside the Craft. But today I do a half decent job of discussing the latest champions in different weight divisions, and in comparing the Eastern European wrestling-influenced approach to the older more upright Japanese way.     

         Getting through university working a few hours a week, Megumi is also unexpectedly well off. She orders Eggs Benedict while I swallow my hunger. The Conglomerate encourages us to eat rats, other pests and stray pets. Besides trapping these creatures, another problem is that poisons can make urban game inedible. As well, people are more careful about their pets these days.

         Nervous and birdish, Megumi is 'alternative.' She wears Indian prints and smells of patchouli. She tells me she has been ʻdumpster diving,ʼ going through hoppers for wasted food. This incurs my strong though hidden disapproval, as would any talk of shoplifting. These measures are strictly forbidden by Religion, and belong instead to the enemies of the Conglomerate. Our kind serve those whom our kind serve.

         So I smile across the table, inwardly resenting Megumi for the food she has ordered. Unnoticed, I feel through the loose weave of her bag, and find her phone. Squeezing until the screen gives, I also make sure I damage some of the circuitry beneath. Megumi buys phones made by a member of the Conglomerate, and today the phone is the main concern. When her steaming food is served in thick rich yellows, Megumi begins talking about this very device. Momentarily I reel, feeling edgey splinters of guilt. But like my other clients, she suspects nothing. Our kind are forever the hidden ones.

         “Once power saving kicks in, I have to insert the charger plug to power it up again,” she complains. ”It means I always have to carry the charger ’round for when my phone goes to sleep.”

         “Nah,” I tell her. “It’s a good phone. You just aren’t turning it back on right.”

         Customers want to believe that when they go shopping they have entered the gates of paradise. They will happily blame incompetence in others or even in themselves for niggling faults in mid to higher priced goods. Our kind is reprogrammed to simply perpetuate this response. If worse comes to worse, our kind can use bigotry to blame rival overseas manufacture, when in reality quality is almost invariant in a given niche, and cross investment is rife.

         Megumi’s complaint is actually valid, as I know from night work filling consumer chat rooms with nonsense and misinformation. Realising how unjustified my curt dismissal, I once again find it hard to continue the encounter. But Megumi merely accepts my rebuke, eating the last of her egg and sour dough in silence.

         As much as I would like to, I would not be effective if I just grabbed her food off her plate and shoved it into my mouth. For instance, I could not then use this cafe in the  future. Perhaps I would have to assault her, which I would not at all mind doing. But this would mark me out, and incurs an additional risk in that I know she is a state champion in Judo. Our kind owe human beings neither obedience nor care. Violence and murder just usually do not suit our purposes. Our kind bring death by thousands of tiny blows. Every day, in the comfort of homes, gardens, cafes.

#

Near my basement room is a crèche. Hunger is driving me, eating me to the core. Flattened and using all fours, I crawl up and down the high fence almost instantly. On the edge of the play area, I approach a child. It gurgles, smiles and points at me with a pudgy digit. My theory is that spikes in implant energy use, possibly not even fully understood by the Conglomerate, occasionally drive our kind to rash acts. If, that is, no other sustenance is available.

         My other theory is that some weeks before the janitor had figured out which largish space was my lair. The old bloke must have realised he had the key and found my two chairs, table and desktop computer. Cushions were piled in one corner, as though I gained normal restorative sleep there. To that extent my space looked like nothing more than an attempt to avoid complete homelessness. But there was also the spray painted sacred number, the remains of a ritual fire and the skull of a small dog. Other evidence had luckily been removed. As for the janitor, if I had returned while he was carrying out his inspection, I would have crushed his windpipe beneath my now merciless grip.

         The police raid is a low key procedure. Three impassively shifting officers corral me into a corner.

         “Do you have a job?” asks a tall detective wearing a tight blonde bun. She rummages through her padded vest for a notebook. Under the vest she wears the creamy blouse and black skirt of a businesswoman.

         “A casual position at the Thirst Off factory, doing quality control” I respond evenly. “Looking for a bit more work to get a better place.” She eyes the premises but says nothing. The other police examine the few items in my possession.

         The detective asks more routine questions, and self-awareness again takes a terrific toll. Glancing away, I hope to hide my inner conflict from her mildly curious gaze. Streams of ideas twist through my reprogramming, traces that strike out, and leave me with an increasingly catastrophic sense of loss. Someone else's memories... a protest against a massive landfill site...other gatherings.... a court appearance. Once, I cannot help thinking, I was less of a friend to the police than I am today. One or two junior policing activities, such as preventing people leaving excess goods on the street, or preventing people taking goods left, even remind me of our kind's work.

         The officers file out. Surely my whole way of life is deeply suspicious. No identification, no money. Even doing no more than testing my DNA could have resulted in.... While I have indeed done something truly terrible, and it is quite possible that one or more of the neighbours saw me lurking around the crèche, there is no mention of custody. The only indicator of the truth is that as she follows the others out, the tall detective tilts her head forward and raises her eyebrows.

         “Don't head anywhere too exotic.” Her tone is bland, almost ironic.

         After they have gone, to distract myself I dwell on my excellence in the Craft. It was I who discovered that because a certain deodorant had a flattened lid, some consumers were turning it upside down. They were getting extra product, basically for free. The member of the Conglomerate who manufactured the item then started rounding the lids. So I helped correct a bad design. Later, if required, say as a sales measure in a retail slump, the lids could be temporarily flattened again. This time as a selling point, and all things are as they should be.

#

         The computer dings the arrival of an email, breaking me from my reveries. It is a form letter sent by the tall detective. She informs me I am no longer a person of interest in the case of the missing child. Our kind truly are the chosen ones.  

         At some point, I am not sure when, I watched others die and speculated about their deaths. Was a horror movie character suddenly disembodied, appalled by the extent of the change, left in shock at the shortness of earthly days compared to the eternity ahead? Such an afterlife would then seem more important than their short time on earth, especially if disembodied spirits and the like interact in some meaningful way. Then again, it's hard to imagine what the dead have to talk about. Unless it be reminiscences of...life.

         Do villains regret over-reaching ambition, heroes enjoy self-assurance, for a single moment before nothingness? One thing I know is that I could not now be entertained by violent portrayals of mortality. Nor need I further speculate about dying. All there is for me, now, is necessity, and a sentience which serves necessity by opposing itself. It eats itself like the snake that eats its own tail. This sentience continually destroys itself and all around it; it even revives and resurrects in order to destroy. Yet more than just respect it, on account of its very inevitability, I serve it faithfully.

         A second week passes since the police raid, and to be safe, I continue to lay low. Using email, I return to regular contact with our kind. Along with the usual Religious reflections, and ideas about the Craft, tales have been circulating on the internet concerning surveillance rooms hidden underneath call centres. The surveillance rooms are supposedly staffed by managers, who, unlike our kind, could actually have fuller lives. Yet apparently they watch domestic scenes from hidden cameras. They cheer and collect on bets if eggs are dropped, or cuss and adjust the monitor if a toothpaste tube is cut in half and the consumer gets that last little bit of product. Perhaps these rumours are no more than our kind's limited fantasies. Nonetheless, my going through the various email threads opens up a more detached perspective. Once more I begin to wonder about the real value of the Craft. 

#

          As though to confirm how I feel, it is not long afterwards that neighbours gather outside, trying to break down the door. No doubt frustrated by the police, they wish to finish me once and for all. The door is steel sheeted, but it sounds like they are using some kind of ram or mattock. So I act quickly before the lock mechanism gives. Detaching the grating from the ventilator shaft, I work my peculiar agility to reattach again from within. They will not catch me even if they realise where I have gone. Able to negotiate any twists and turns, I will not fatigue crawling in the close confines, and will lurk until the small hours in the maze of shafts.

        If, as has clearly happened, I arouse significant suspicion, I am required to report to a small industrial space nearby. No doubt soon after reporting I will be returned to the inert condition immediately prior to this one. This is what happens in these cases, though only if there are other units ready to come online. Otherwise our kind are redeployed far away. The thought of the likely final outcome actually gives me relief.

         Scenes from the past form upon the receding shadows of the shaft. A black van, its tyres bump hurriedly over unkempt streets. The surgical lines of grey devices menace through sealed plastic. A bearded man struggles against straps. Later, those parts of him salvaged from the darkest abyss into which he has been thrown are put to the service of a death-in-life. A word occurs to me to describe the scenes replaying across that abysmal boundary: metempsychosis. 

“The Breakaway Line”, @Skeje_7                           

Gerald Keaney and Ross Hornblower hope for the best beside mosquito-infested mangroves in Brisbane, Queensland. They wrote "Fix It Man" during a spell of intense activity that also produced various youtube skits and bandcamp releases (all under Gerald's name). Gerald is an analytic philosopher who has published articles on logic, city design and censorship. He works part time as a paralegal. Ross is a pilot who for a time captained Amy Winehouse's personal jet. He kept the liquor cabinet locked until after the gig.