Neither Harrison nor anybody else, could say with any certainty what it was his company actually did. It manufactured nothing, produced nothing, and provided nothing, but still managed to employ half a million people in six countries. It made “thirty two point six percent” in the third quarter. Harrison could not say offhand what his contribution to that had been, but it had no effect at all on his hourly rate of pay.

He did know that company policy forbade his from discussing it on Facebook, though this was not something he had ever been tempted to do. The company expected employees to be proper representatives at all times, and disciplined a hundred and three junior level employees for inappropriate conduct on social media in 2015 (certain images culled from Instagram are kept in the District General Manager’s harddrive for archival purposes). Hiring practices were considered progressive (entirely inline with the community standards of its host branches) in that women were hired and fired in numbers roughly comparable to their male counterparts. Maternity leave was generous and often permanent, and sexual harassment guidelines ensured that no complaints were lodged. Ever.

Harrison’s cubicle lay in the very centre of the fifth floor of a ten story building. While its very large window admitted an excellent view of the neighbouring Sunlife Insurance building, it admitted very little natural sunlight. Company regulations forbade the opening of any such windows, so Harrison’s atmosphere largely consisted of carpet cleaner, windex and fabreeze. The company lost more than five thousand working hours every yeat to sick building syndrome since it discontinued cleaning out its air ducts (economies of $20 thousand per annum). Harrison daily drank the attar of lysol and erasable white board ink, and enjoyed their fever dreams on company time.

Being situated dead centre in the middle of the large concrete block, he felt himself entombed in the Company Temple, fed a steady diet of embalming fluid, buried under a million tons of packing foam. Centuries from now, they would dig him up and marvel at his state of preservation. Archaeology students would pour over the Company codex and the Company canopic jars where they kept his brain.

[Please note: Egyptians did not actually preserve the brain. Neither did the company. Harrison was unaware of the former]

“How did I get here?” he often wondered. What horrendous act of blasphemy had he committed to be buried alive in this tomb.

Into this tomb one day wandered the Department Manager. Years ago Company wizards had carved the Department Manager out of building insulation and slipped a copy of their mission statement under his tongue to animate him (‘bring him to life” was beyond their powers).

The Department Manager could crack open a tiny smile in his chalky face, and a dozen employees would keel over dead. He could slay a sycophant with a twinkle of his eye, kill two toadies with a blow of his tongue, and break a department’s worth of spirits with one note from his smooth, sleepy baritone. The Reaper himself, envisioned by Bergman or Bosch, never left so many dead souls in his wake, in a plain grey suit as well (company regulation of course).

Every afterlife needed its demons, Harrison thought as the Department Manager wafted into his cubicle one day like a cloud of gently blowing mustard gas. “Good morning Harrison,” said the Department Manager in his slimy baritone. “I want to show you something.” and a hundred more of Harrison’s hopes and dreams died.

“ We have a new initiative,” the Manager went on, initiative being one of the Company’s favourite black magical incantations. Harrison braced himself for the worst. “Look at this,” he said, pointing to a little bulb attached to Harrison’s monitor which had not been there the night before. “ With this you can interconnect with anyone else in the company. And interconnectedness is key!”

The monitor switched to a patchwork of pictures of other people from the office. Harrison’s colleagues and co-workers, at their desks, slurping coffee, staring nervously at their screens. “You can hold conferences, and consultations from the comfort of your desk.” beamed Department Manager. “No more disruptions to your work.”

Harrison felt surprisingly little relief at not having to take two steps to talk to his colleagues face-to face, or leave his desk for two minutes to do so.

“Do they know they’re being watched?”

“Of course! Online all the time! Everyone can watch everyone. It’s the era of interconnectedness.”

“Are you online?”

“Only by appointment.”

Harrison nodded. Online all the time – unless by appointment. “So they can see me as well?”

“Of course! Online all the time.” He clicked on a little logo, and there was Harrison, staring back at himself.

Gaunt. Thin. Pallid. His hair was receding, and his forehead looked bulbous and blank. The angle of the camera made his nose look bigger than he thought it actually was. “Do I actually look like that?”

District manager laughed a perfunctory laugh. “We all look different on camera.”

Indeed. Harrison looked from side to side. Did his face really sag that much? Did his neck hair stick out that much? The lighting was bad. It was dim in the office at the best of times, and the company must have skimped on whatever brand of camera they had decided to install. The lighting was bad, and cast shadows. The colour was bad, practically black and white, but with just enough colour to make him look sickly.

At lunch, Harrison stared himself in the bathroom mirror. It didn’t seem so bad there, but even so, he began to notice things he hadn’t before. Pockmarks. Blackheads. Had his five o’clock shadow always been so prominent? Did he always have such huge bags under his eyes? Going back to his desk, he made sure he himself was not on his monitor. He didn’t feel like looking at himself. Then he realized – he couldn’t stop everyone else in the office from looking at him. Were they looking at him now?

He tried to look busy. Just keep doing what he had always done. They couldn’t fault him for that. Everyone else looked plenty busy – they didn’t seem to notice the cameras. Or were they just pretending not to, like Harrison himself?

He tried to get on with things. It wasn’t as if he worked in secrecy before. He worked in plain sight of anyone who stepped into the office, or indeed stood up from their desk. But this somehow did feel different. His cubicle at least had been his own. A little shield from the rest, a little bubble to himself. Now, each and every one could look straight up his nose.

None of them seemed to be paying attention. Were they just trying to look like they weren’t paying attention? The others were not acting differently. They typed. They click-click-clicked on their mice. They looked utterly absorbed in their work – or bored with it. Not one of them looked at the camera. Supposing they did, and found Harrison staring back at them?
He turned back to his work and tried to look equally absorbed (rather than bored). Which is what he should have doing anyway, while sitting at his desk. He found after a while that he couldn’t. He could shake the feeling he was being stared at, but couldn’t check, because then they’d know he had been staring at them.
The performance itself was too much work. When the thought struck him, that if he was being stared at, maybe he was being judged as well. Did he look as busy as they actually were? As absorbed? What’s more, supposing they looked just as he scratched his ear, or had a finger up his nose? The whole office would see it.
He kept his hands planted firmly on the desk. No one could judge him for that. It was harder than he would have thought. More than once, he almost scratched his scalp. All over his face and his body, little itches he had never noticed before screamed to be scratched. A stray hair tickled his forehead. An eyelash fell out of place. A piece of his lunch lodged itself unignorably between his teeth. The supreme effort to not groom himself in front of the office took far more out of him than his job-related tasks ever had.
That day, Harrison’s productivity was not only no higher than usual but actually quite a bit lower. The company would notice. But surely they would also see from the cameras just how absorbed he had been in his work!
At that moment, a colleague sneezed. A high-pitched little yelp of a sneeze that could only been Josephine, a women with a very distinctive sneeze. Harrison not only heard her from the other side of the office, but saw her in the upper right corner of his screen. She wiped her nose rather ungracefully, not before Harrison saw the trail of snot running over her upper lip.

Harrison looked away. At first he felt disgust, but then realized something: she had forgotten she was on camera! In a moment, she would remember and die of embarrassment. Harrison felt terrible for her, for having intruded on that intensely private moment, and tried not to look at her for the rest of the day.
It was a relief when it was finally time to leave. While Harrison felt strange to be watched all the time, he had to admit it was hardly unusual. There were security cameras in the front lobby tracking his every ingress and egress, as there were in every other office, convenience store, shopping mall and parking lot in the country. Somebody somewhere could, if they wanted to, track down exactly where he bought his tic-tacs. There were red light cameras on every street corner that didn’t care if one had been trapped in the intersection because the car in fron of them had decided to slow down. Police cars all had dash-cams. . .
And there were the people on their iphones, recording everything. Anything they found amusing could go up on Youtube the very same day, the same hour, that very minute. There wasn’t a moment so private or embarrassing it couldn’t be instantly viewed by the entire planet.
Harrison hadn’t really thought of it before. Could somebody be filming him just then, on his drive home? There didn’t seem to be – the other drivers were watching teh road and the pedestrians were trying not to get run-over. Still, it would only take a moment, a flick of the thumb. He wouldn’t even see it happening.
At home, Harrison closed the curtains and tried to watch TV. There was only Celebrity Big Brother.

The next day, Harrison took special care while shaving so that no patches of fuzz were missed. He took a minute to make sure no nose hair was more prominent than any other. He took extra time to comb his hair, and noticed with dismay that he was much more prone to dandruff today than usual. Or than he usually noticed anyway. . .A white shirt ought to camouflage that problem. Then he noticed he had no clean white shirts. Each had one or two many mysterious stains, or just a little too much ring-around-the collar than could be tolerated. He ended up cannibalizing his best suit – the one he’d worn to his sister’s wedding the previous April. It felt stiff and starchy up against his skin, but he could find no immediate flaws within it, so he stuck with it. He ended up being late. . .

Was the security guard paying extra attention that morning? Usually the security guard barely looked up when Harrison walked in, bored with his job and altogether indifferent to who entered the building. Did his eyes now linger on Harrison?
At the guard’s kiosk were a whole bank of monitors showing scenes from around the building, like the world’s most boring television show. There wasn’t a square foot of the building that wasn’t watched all the time by someone. Nothing every happened in those corridors, stairwells or garages. What was it they expected to find? What was it they wanted to see?

Harrison couldn’t help thinking everyone in the office was looking at him differently. Of course, they all greeted him politely as they were expected to and quickly looked away, as the custom demanded. He couldn’t be sure though that there wasn’t something more behind their eyes; judgment perhaps, or maybe mockery. The monitors told him nothing. No one ever looked into the cameras it seemed. Maybe Harrison just didn’t see them; they might have been looking all the time, and pulling away when they saw his head twitch. Possibly. He couldn’t prove that they weren’t. He tried to catch them in the act. He would never stare; he couldn’t afford to be so blatant. He just flicked his eyes a little bit, just enough to steal a glance. But he never could catch them at it.
He still had to get his work done. What the cameras were supposed to contribute to the process was still to be revealed.
One day, he tried to confide in one of his colleagues. Gerry was the closest thin Harrison had to a friend. Gerry had big frizzy hair above a receding hairline that seemed even more dramatic on a screen. He tended to sweat heavily, but always wore the same heavy woollen sweater. If he ever felt even slightly self-conscious of it, he gave no indication.
“So what do you think of the cameras?” Harrison tried to sound casual, like he didn’t really care but had to make conversation.
“Oh yeah, great idea!” said Gerry cheerfully.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” said Gerry. “It’s like having everyone one conference call all the time. You don’t have to stop and dial any numbers, don’t have to get up and bother anyone. You turn around and everyone’s already there.”
“But doesn’t it sometimes. . .you know. . .”
Gerry looked blank. “What?”
Harrison tried to find the words. “Don’t you get tired of it?”
Gerry shrugged. “Not really. Why would I?”
“Don’t you ever get tired of being looked at all the time?”
“Not really. I mean, we all work in the same room anyway, don’t we?”
Harrison supposed it was true.
“A lot of offices don’t have these cubicles you know,” continued Gerry. “Open concept is the order of the day. I’ve heard that some places have desks arranged in a circle, so everybody faces everybody all the time. Classrooms are doing that now too, in the schools. You remember being in school Harry?”
Harrison didn’t, not really. He remembered slouching, trying not to be noticed. He remembered it being futile; the teacher would always find him, always catch him in the act of whatever it was he was doing and always find whatever it was he was trying to hide. Teachers were all seeing overseers; and they didn’t even have cameras.
“’sides,” said Gerry. “I like working with people. A lot less lonely than it used to be.”
“Have you been using them?” asked Harrison. “The cameras I mean.”
“Oh sure, all the time.”
Harrison had never seen Gerry making much use of them. That must have been another thing that happened when Harrison wasn’t paying attention. When he got back to his desk, he risked watched Gerry just a little bit. Absolutely nothing happened. While stealing glances at this nonevent, Harrison realized he asked –couldn’t bring himself to ask- the one thing he actually wanted to know:
Had Gerry ever watched him?
It was not long after that when the Manager of the Department announced that Harrison would be addressing the Board of Directors at the next annual conference.
“Me?” Harrison couldn’t stop himself from blurting out. “Why me?”
The Manager of the Department took it for false modesty and smiled. “Because we feel your performance of late has been exemplary, and you would be an ideal candidate to explain the benefits of the new system.”
Harrison felt his feet collapse underneath him. He felt the world open up and swallow him whole. He felt a truck full of cement offload its cargo into his chest. He was going to stand in front of the Board of Directors and tell them who-knew-what. He felt his lunch, breakfast, and previous night’s dinner bubble in his stomach and threaten to erupt.
“What. . .what will they want me to say?” he managed to stammer.
“They want to hear about the success of the system,” the Manager said helpfully. “The want to optimize utilization.”
“Oh,” said Harrison. “When do they want me?”
“Friday.”
So much for Friday. Harrison could look forward to opening his weekend in front of the Board of Directors. The Directors, the Investors, the Executives, would all be looking up at him, expecting to hear something worthwhile, as if Harrison knew anything they would find worthwhile.
“It’s a great opportunity,” said the Manager. “The kind of thing that could make a career.”
Or break it, Harrison thought bitterly. He bit his lip as the Manager walked away, then started cursing under his breath. Then he remembered he was being recorded, and tried to turn his look of consternation into one of intense concentration, a look he took pains to maintain until the end of the day.

Sleep that night was out of the question. His chest was tight as a drum, and he had to struggle for breath. He had a speech to write. Tell them all something wonderful about the new system. In language they understood. Tell them what they wanted to hear: how brilliant thye all were and how beautifully their ideas are working. So amazingly, they should try it themselves!
“Thank you for having me,” he wrote. “It’s my honour to talk to you today about our latest innovation. . .” Our latest? Harrison had nothing to do with it! “Your latest innovation. . .” Who was he to lecture them on their innovation? He wrote “The innovation. . .” which didn’t sound right at all.
Nothing he wrote sounded right. He couldn’t think of a single line or phrase that couldn’t potentially backfire. He stared at the screen until needles poked through the backs of his eyes. It was useless. He went for a walk.
He passed by an ungainly set of teenagers, and wondered if they wanted to mug him. A passing squad car chased them away, but brought no relief – supposing it wanted to arrest him?
Harrison finally slipped into a local bar. He had never been much of drinker, but suddenly wanted one quite badly.
He ordered a double scotch, and wondered of the bartender hadn’t given him a strange look. As if Harrison were the intruder, an uncultured outsider who wandered into where he wasn’t welcome and violated some time-honoured custom. . .
There hadn’t been any signs out. The door had been open, the pint specials and menus were on full display. It was clearly open to the public, so Harrison was going to take full advantage. He looked at the other patrons. There were some men sitting behind him. Did they want to fight him? They seemed more intent on the game, playing on a television behind him. In order to watch, they had to stare at him. Harrison tried not to stare back, but could feel their eyes boring into him.
There were two girls sitting at the other end of the bar, twenty-something, dressed for a night out. Did they want to fuck him? Were they sizing him up, assessing his dimensions, yearning for him? It had had been a long time, if ever, anyone had thought this way about Harrison. More likely, they were laughing at the dusting of dandruff on his shoulder, his stray nose-hairs or graceless receding hairline. That was very probably the subject of their covert whisperings, invariably ending in giggles.
Everywhere he looked, Harrison saw himself the potential centre of attention. It was more than he could take, and he returned to the street before he even finished his drink.
That night he fell asleep well after midnight. The news were covering a rash of identity thefts, and new, still legal, software that allowed social media to steal your personal information. Harrison disconnected his wi-fi.

The next day, he wondered if anyone noticed the bags under his eys. He tried very hard to keep his yawns in, to keep his eyes wide open, to maintain every appearance of full alertness. It was exhausting. As soon as he could do so convincingly, he snuck away to the bathroom, locked himself in a stall and slapped himself awake. Then he vomited a torrent of obscenities into the toilet. He emerged feeling better, only to find Gerry standing at the urinal next to the stall.

Supposing there were no other cameras? Supposing nobody could see him? Ridiculous of course. Why would they allow him to see everyone else but no one to look back at him?
To test him. To observe him under stress. To test his loyalty.
But the others were hooked up – he could see them all. GIFs. Created without their knowledge. But then Gerry knew about the program, he talked about it openly. He must have been in on it. And Josephine too – she’d staged that sneeze, before posing for her GIF.
They were all in on it. They had to be.
The day of the address finally came. Harrison cobbled together a speech, in his sleepless hours after midnight, which he was sure would get him fired and blacklisted in the industry. The thought put him in a foul mood, and it only got fouler as he reached the convention centre where the conference was held.
It was a black tie event, with many VIPS in attendance. People Harrison had never even seen, let alone met, but had heard existed according to legend. Most of the hourederbs cost more than his suit. He was sure the VIPS were snickering behind his back about it. Probably his shoes as well, which had a very prominent bald patch over his right big toe where the leather had peeled away. He tried to cover it with magic marker, to no avail.
The grand hall was filled with tables covered in pristine white table cloth. There candles in little jars and place cards written in calligraphy. It looked like a wedding. Harrison was seated at a table with five other fortunate nobodies who had attracted the attention of their District Managers. All were nervous, none of them spoke.
The speakers were a Who’s Who of the Company’s Very Important Persons. They were uniformly boring. Harrison spent the time going over his speech, hoping to make some minute improvements in pencil. He kept the papers on his lap so as not to appear rude, but doubtless looked old fashioned; most of the speakers were reading from tablets.
Harrison almost didn’t notice when his name was finally called. He thought his legs would collapse underneath him as he stood. They felt like gelatine. He waddled to the podum, feeling like a jelly fish. The VIPS must have thought he was drunk.
They were all looking at him now. The CEOs and District Managers and the investors. All had their eyes on him, and his receding hairline, his dusting of dandruff, the balk spots on his shoes and his baggy two-sizes-too-big suit. Everywhere he looked were unfriendly eyes locked on him, scowling and sneering and staring. A very important looking bald man appeared to be frowning. A woman who reminded him of his third grade teacher had an eyebrow raised. A youngish man straight from the cover of GQ seemed to be holding in a laugh.
Harrison stumbled with his papers. They very nearly fell onto the floor. “Thank you for having me,” he mumbled. Someone shouted for him to use the microphone. He spluttered an apology and started again. His voice now seemed startlingly loud. He wasn’t used to the sound of his own voice. It rang through the hall and filled every corner. It sounded weak and whiny. He spoke to close to the microphone and it gave a shriek of feedback. The audience rubbed their ears. He tried to continue. “It is my honour to talk to you tonight about the latest innovation for optimizing utility in our branch offices. . .”
Somebody coughed, and then Harrison did drop his papers. They fluttered to the floor in a graceful heap, off the stage and onto the nearest table. Harrison muttered another apology and stopped to pick up the lost pages. The bald man in front retrieved one and held it up for Harrison. All around him were snickers and suppressed chuckles. Everybody watching, everyone in the company. They’d set him up for this. They put him up there to grind him down, and now they were revelling in his discomfiture.
He made eye contact with the bald man, who looked back at him with all the benevolent condescension of a man in power. A man who didn’t have a web cam hooked up to his monitor.
“What are you looking at?” snarled Harrison.
The Very Important Man looked confused. “Excuse me?”
“What are you looking at?” Harrison grabbed the man’s lapels. “You see something funny?”
The snickers and the chuckles turned to gasps. Was somebody actually questioning the Very Important Man?
“Enjoying the show? Getting a kick out of it? I’ll you something to watch!” Harrison launched himself from the stage into the man. They went straight through the dinner table, scattering its contents, landing on a pile of broken dishes.
“Do you watch that at home? Jerk off to it maybe?”
Arms took hold of Harrison and tried to pull him back. He flailed and elbowed some anonymous nose with a satisfying crack. By this time, one of the candles on the table had caught on the pristine white table cloth, giving rise to a small blaze. Harrison took hold of a little carving knife and chased away those trying to stamp out the flames. “Let it go! You want a show don’t you? Let it go, let it go. . .”
Then he felt the security tazer.
Of course someone had recorded the whole incident. It had gone viral before his trial date was announced. It was a highly publicized case, widely covered by the news media. Harrison became famous. After his sentencing, he lived in a small single cell with a mattress and a toilet. As was standard procedure at this particular correctional facility, he was under surveillance twenty-four hours a day.

Howdy folks! The rain doth make cowards of us all, and we didn't actually venture out after all. But, thanks to the miracle of modern technology, we can still partake!

Catch us here, and let us join in the fun!

https://hangouts.google.com/call/gf5bryrvjbh5tf2s7aiarn3y5au

Granted, only I will be writing - Tetsab wants to do dishes instead - but hey! She'll pop in to say hello.

I'm going to be here until that damnable Eye Contact story is done, come what may!