Bugman on the windshield

Arm wrestling with the invisible hand.

The daily dose of pornoslop played on, the moans ricocheting off of his blocky skull which was too preoccupied by a string of the day’s worries. 

Credit card overdue payment rent past due work too starts too early blood sugar too high IQ too low. 

Most of the worries were made reality manifest by a string of unread notifications, omens sent directly by the invisible hand itself. Smooth and sinewy like his own palm it was abstracted from real life, only callused by pressing buttons. 

But the invisible hand was on a losing streak. It was getting some kind of GMO cheeto corn product dusted gamer rage for being unable to manipulate the downtrodden, broken, bugged out NPC. “Pay, up loser” it screamed. The threats were closer than ever before, but never less unreal. Handcrafted eviction notices, cryptic phone calls from shifty lenders, recruitment letters from the army. Uneasy, but unworried, the threats were realer than him at this point; they had to live with him, but he refused to exist in their world. His credit score was 410, but he felt it to be less than 0. His bank account was negative; to him it was monopoly money — to spend it would entail going outside —being — an act he had long grown tired of. 

He pawwed past the onslaught of social credit infractions, trying to focus on the boobs, the plot, his chummy manhood, anything that could provide a lapse. His whole life was a lapse in the wheels of progress, a bug on the windshield of a crazy bullet train. Dopamine depleted, restlessly apathetic he scanned the screen for something, anything different that wouldn’t require too much of his withered attention. 

He opened and close tab after tab, ready to start but not to do. youtube onlyfans tik tok instagam reddit twitter, typing automatically the words seared into his hands. He couldn’t control them, it was all muscle memory. Eventually he found himself scrolling through a “forbidden” video playlist, surely for only two outliers demographics: the numbly depraved and the depravingly numb. The former watches them because they’re compelled to, the latter because why not. The cursed algorithm, trained on God knows what horrors to serve this outcome, had surely delivered. For at least 1 and a half hours of car crash compilations, his mind was like the audio on a dashcam, absolutely silent. But it was not enough to stave off the rest insomnia that kept him uneased. 

He darted video to video looking for something, anything that was nothing in particular. Bleary eyed, tired, and high strung, something had piqued his inquiet interest. Suicide speedrun compliation.  It had been on his mind for a while, despite the content he consumed day in day out dancing around the matter. Too taboo, more of that means less eyes on a screen. This video: a real showstopper, something that could keep his hands busy for at least a few minutes. Perhaps he had just found a way to shush the shackling slog of time.  

A flurry of choppily edited cuts projected not on, but into his eyes. Forbidden knowledge passed on through the ages by wisened cowards, depressed dreamers too pathetic to commit to the act like the characters on the screen. Shot after shot of desperate narration mostly in the more shady languages from the global down and out.  They walked so he could run. He tried to guess which the next would be? Gunshot, bathtub, concrete cannonball? He was finally keeping himself busy. His mind pacified, but his thumbs still twiddling. Eventually they found their way to the sheet he was wrapped in, one of the only furnishings in his squalid abode — usually used as a table cloth for his delivery box coffee table. 

Fidgeting, staring at the screen, something stirred in him. The desperate souls all seemed so unreal, but in a manner much different than his pending obligations—  less of a forgotten nightmare, more of a deja vu. The videos got shorter and shorter. More and more brutal, more shodilly recorded. It took a while to decipher  what exactly was happening, making the realization hit harder. He had surely reached the dark side of the algorithm, some kind of demon numerology rising out of the bits and bytes that were all but foreign to his simpleton shattered mind. The angel of death itself rising out his router in the form of cancerous 5G waves. 

The video went through a lull, and in that moment he had disengaged,  realizing that his hands had stopped fidgeting. They were holding his bedsheet, in the shape of a noose. He almost thought nothing of it, like tying a shoe. He cursed his lame attention span for interrupting the daze. If this video couldn’t get his mind off things, nothing could. He had to step in. 

He fastened the reaper’s bowtie against his neck, tightening the knot like a good scout. The content picked up speed. Shot for shot soul after lost soul he tightened the slack. The invisible hand had played rough, choked him too hard, gone too far. It served up something too forbidden, eyes slammed open are great for business but begets the risk of them recoiling wide shut forever. Now it will pay with the price it had put on him. 

Free at last, he felt a sense of relief long forgotten as the content reached its climax. The light faded as he pushed on his pressure points, giving himself a stork factory reset. A sacrifice not to the market, but to nothing. One last fuck you to his debtors, creditors, and imagined critics. Muscles limp, he could feel the spirits of his digital compatriots in mortal coil base jumping pulling him away, far away from the computer, away from the akathisia that haunted his unfortunate chassis, away from any worries past and future. 

Closing time, the lights were almost out, but there was one more customer brimming with entitled rage. The invisible hand, too proud to be mocked even by death, commandeered his screen. The broadcast was interrupted by an advertisement. Thus began an arm wrestle between it and the reaper. Death versus undead capital, demise against demiurge.

—

The invisible hand leaned in with all of its strength, increasing the volume and brightness. It pressed play.

“Loser, failchild, less than nothing bug, I’m going to call your manager — no, I might even have to tip off the suicide watch.

We’ve all been there from time to time. Are you tired of being bullied by your objective superiors? Being steamrolled by gig after gig? Do you want to transcend the common herd, reigning supreme in the professional realm? Elevate your value. Propel your persona. Don’t just secure the bag, secure the corporate mandate of heaven. With this one quick course I will help you vibrate higher, taking you to the level of an apex professional.``

The sweet, much anticipated release of death was delayed, the final broadcast interrupted by a message from its sponsors. His bloodshot eyes focused on the burning screen that demanded his full attention. 

“Click now or else you will never ascend to greatness. The corporate mandate of heaven. The longer you watch this ad, the more you’re missing out on sealing deals, turning heads, winning an aura of undeniable superiority. You won’t just make your peers rabid with jealousy, you’ll embarrass them, fill them with self loathing and doubt! Sounds too good to be true? Don’t be stupid. You literally have nothing better to do. In just 30 minutes, you’ll master the ancient arts of dark negotiation, deep organizational hierarchy, cryptonetworking, and synergy.”

At this point the fatal trance was all but gone. He cursed, pleaded with the invisible hand that had once again commandeered his attention away from the death drive. “No just let me be, please allow me to die.” 

The ad wasn’t even that great, it only had to win the race to the bottom, to steal (or perhaps break) his attention just long enough to keep him from doing anything else. His guardian angel infomercial subliminally beaming “Be not afraid”, converting him back to the church of consumption. 

“LIMITED OFFER: This offer wont last long. Don’t go back to scrolling your prolefeed. This course will change your life. 

Act now and I’ll even throw in the builder’s 1000X dictionary. You’ll never crack the league of apex professionals until you speak their language. This exclusive offer teaches you the 1000 cheat phrases and affirmations true apex professionals use to reign supreme over their competitors.These slots are filling up so fast I only have 1, no 5, no 3 more spots! That’s right, one last opportunity to capture the corporate mandate of heaven. It’s now or never, are you going to be pathetic forever? That’s fine by me! Stay poor! You won’t see this ad ever again. Or you can change your life. Click now at…”

The ad counter was ticking 5..4..3, death tapping its schtye impatiently waiting for round two, inching to get back to its irregularly scheduled programming. 

The advert had distracted him: not back to his usual humdrum daze, nor towards  death’s fatal gaze. His finger froze hovering above the mouse. Somehow in the midst of all this noise he had retreated into a some remote chamber in the recesses of his mind, far removed from any conscious or subconscious reasoning. In that split second he had control, not just over his life, but over death and undead altogether. The two were so distracted by their struggle over him they hadn’t realized he’d come to some kind of vestigial sense. For the first time in years he felt an inkling of autonomy, the options weren’t ideal but the choice was his. Die living or live through death. Was it even a choice? Consumption and suicide were both carnal urges at end of the day, the consequences contrasted but the reflex all the same, both taking it to a limits at the opposite ends of the same horseshoe. 

In his limited choice he realized that he was too rusty. He finally had some say in the matter, but couldn’t utter the words; he wanted to make a choice, but didn’t know how to. “Death” he wanted to scream. “I just want to die” he mouthed, but it was no use — he was locked in, a slave to his reflexes. He banged on the walls of his numbskull as his finger made the decision for him. 

——

Something was felt. The sensation of falling. A pulse in some extremities. The fingers tingled to life as they realized they had an owner. An arm, a torso, a body, a mind. His mind. He was coming to something, recalling the fact that he existed. But where? Was he careening off the mortal coil or was it just a dream? Dreams were something he hadn’t had in years, so he opted for the latter. Finally: hell, something completely different. “This should be interesting” he thought. Burning, yes, fire, flames curled up the side of his cheek. The feeling grew in intensity as his extremities pulsed with adrenaline, followed by the whine of a demon. The burning reached a peak at around 87 degrees — surely hell was hotter than this, he thought. As the came closer he realized it wasn’t baphomet or beelzebub, the roar was familiar. In fact it was more of a whine than a roar. The familiar whine of his neighbors Weedkiller700C predator grade lawn mower. His face was burning alright, not from brimstone and hellfire, but from the overheating battery of his laptop. He was unfortunately very alive. More alive, in fact, than he had been in as long as he could remember. He even felt an unfamiliar emotion stirring in him: dread.

He couldn’t stay in bed, his nervous system was overridden by an agitation that blocked him from opening his phone. He tried to lie pitiably in his bed, but that was even harder. The only relief was springing  up, but that only lasted for a second. He paced back and forth for a good minute, picking through his old pacifiers like a junkie in a jewelry store. Consoles, “collectible” plastic knick knacks, crinkle bags of high fructose cornslop. He couldn’t hold anything in his fingers for more than a second without throwing it aside in apathy.

He tossed through phone apps like profiles in a dating app; not pausing even once he couldn’t be seduced by their killer features. Unsatisfied, he stared catatonic at the screen, rustling and rocking back and forth in his ratty gamer chair. Eventually his fingers settled on his email app, clicking all of the buttons trying to feel something , anything. 

His eyes found  hyperfocused on the “compose” button. The Blue rectangle shined off his retinas as if it was a sheet of the purest crystal 10 counties over. He wasn’t a druggie, save for his digital vices, but out of nowhere he knew he was was destined for some queer kind of fatal hit. He couldn’t rationalize it, but he had to press the button, he just had to write an email — he couldn’t resist. As he pressed the button he felt a thousand chills run down his spine. A feeling not unlike the one he had last night, a compulsion, some asexual libido that was somewhere between carnal arousal and a superego flow state. 

“What’s wrong with me?” He tried to inspect the feeling, but introspection became impossible the harder he pondered. Any attempts to rationalize his newfound proclivity made it grew stronger. He couldn’t sit still anymore. His fingers massaged the keys, possessed by a saccharine touch they have never once mustered before. They began to write. 

“To whomever it concerns”

“To whomever it con”

“To whom”

They for sure weren’t writing Shakespeare, he didn’t quite know what they were getting at, but he could tell they were just warming up.

“Dear reader…” 

“Professional at your service..”

“Hello I am reaching out to..”

His fingers cracked his — their — knuckles. They were still breaking out of the unmotivated sluggishness that had possessed them for the past 30 or so years — that is to say, his own personality. 

“Witness me reshape your..”

Better. The fingers were picking up speed. 

“Witness me reshape your vectors into an explosive synergy. Watch me augment your value 100000 fold into a streamlined, optimized deliverable. I won’t just give you a solution, I’ll bring the answer, the panacea. We will grow and build together into all star professionals. I can bring you the greatness you’re destined for. This is just the beginning”

On initial inspection he felt a hint of insecurity when the scrawl hit his eyes. Even the dullest philistine would be offended by the buzzword salad. But they weren’t his own, they came from the fingers, fully loaned to the suprarational market. It knew all that he did not, and it neede wanted to write at all costs. 

Iteration after iteration his hands picked away, crafting a message so obscene it would be an infohazard to put on written record. He shook restlessly, each stroke and tap only evading that horrid restlessness for mere seconds, the jitter rebounding with a slave driver’s ferocity any time he tried to rest his repetitively strained digits. 

The first hour or so brought him some amusement. It was nice to finally be focused; whatever it was he was doing was beside the fact. What mattered was that doing something for once — all without having to muster an ounce of willpower.

The hours flew by. He had hardly noticed it was dark outside when he felt the yearning pause. His hands paused and then flopped flat on the keyboard. Work was done for today. 

He didn’t know what to do now. The itch was at bay, but it filled in the urge to pass time, moreso avoid time, that had customarily haunted him. He still couldn’t settle down, scroll, twiddle away his hours. Mindfulness was a nonstarter. He did a lot today. Sent hundreds of brazen emails that could end his questionable state in the labor market. Shouldn't he feel good? He did not. Against all advice he went to bed angry. Not at the new urge that haunted him, nor the listlessness it had replaced, nor even the premature death that all had robbed him of. A furious spark was brewing him: raw, unrefined, untargeted rage. He wanted to mutiny against all of the forces that haunted him, to force them to walk the plank of his psyche, to sail for unchartered waters. Something pure, a fountain of youth, a lazarus pit to resurrect a type of innocence all but lost on anyone these days. Alas he was tired. Maybe the sandman could help him in this endless war on mental terror. 

After tossing and turning he fell into some semblance of sleep. Barely escaping the frame of his bed, the stale air of his sad room, instead the dream world floated around him like high atmosphere air. Hard to gasp, not entirely sustaining life off earth. In those all to brief moments between bleary eyed wakefulness, he captured glimpses. He was astral projecting at 1 mile per hour, getting closer — not to a distant lover, nor to a tropical paradise —but to an energy.  His dreams was hijacked, rerouted away from any noble sacrifice or meaningful vocation. His essence — young, yet crippled from years worth of spiritual toil — split in 10, chugging straight towards the source of the energy, the raw forbidden force of the free market. He looked out the windows of his soul as it flew from cash register to cash register, transaction to ephemeral transaction. Past the drug corners, dirty dollars, and . At this point he was only passing local chamber of commerce, but it was about the journey, not the destination. 

He awoke with that terrible hunger one get’s falling asleep hungry. The only worse sensation than being awakened by a clock is being awakened by the fire alarms  of one’s own body. He couldn’t stop to acknowledge the day that had been given to him. One of a limited run, time was ticking. And for him, today — more than ever before— time was money. 

He sprung to his particleboard desk, powering on the corporate laptop. He had an honest email job, the tasks and responsibilities of which are not at all important or consequential. The only important thing was that he was somehow making money. How? The most accredited economist could barely outline it. But that doesn’t matter. He didn’t just get to work, he got in it, wrapped himself up in ticker tape like a mummy king of the market. 

Email after email, meeting after meeting, it all felt effortless. His market driven fingers blessed every deliverable with a midas touch. The stakeholders had never beholden such value, he was a force to be reckoned with. His job, whatever it was, had never been easier. He couldn’t be automated, obsoleted, because he himself was an automaton of the highest order, tapped directly into momentum’s interface. Vibrating at a higher level taking orders from progress itself. 

But still, he didn’t feel tapped in, the center of some world. He was on the fringes, a cog in something greater ponzi scheme. Progress a bit player, a function in some simulation that, even with these cheat codes, he could hardly understand. He didn’t have the hardware. He was overclocked, on the verge of burning out. 

The workday was over. The itch had subsided for now, but he could tell the appetite was growing more ravenous. The invisible hand was less of a phantom and more of a psychic parasite, finally settling into its host. The autopilot was a relief at first. The most dreaded moments were gamified. He was entering the zone rather than zoning out; doing something, as opposed to his usual routine of passive consumption. But he realized the growing listlessness was more of the same. A bottomless pit of discontent filling to the brim with content; it didn’t matter if he was creating or consuming it — he was still in the same sorry place. And now that place took up more of him, demanded more, he couldn’t get a break. There was no escape — any fire exit would just lead to another burning building. It was all subsumed, he was just wandering spark. 

Maybe sleep could give some kind of relief. A hallucination into a world unbounded by the wicked forces that possessed every waking hour. An all too short temp contract in the army of the dead that was at odds with the dollarized demiurge. He went to bed.

Without a map, no gas, he eventually hitchhiked his way to consciousness rest stop on a truckload of sleeping pills. Like a high speed train, or more accurately a prison bus, he couldn’t guide the wheel in this state, let alone look out the windows. The molecules in his bloodstream didn’t truly lead him to a temporary peace; they were a bridge between the material and worlds, allowing the consumption to seep further into his being. The invisible hand multiplied up the nerves in his wrist, making its way to his heart, his very soul. 

He flew past the green blurs of dollar sign foliage, billboards, real estate, prime and unprime, for rent and foreclosed, stores of wealth expanding and exploding like supernovas. He was on a red eye trip towards the root of all evil — money that is. His mind’s eye was bigger than its stomach, craving more and more and more. Buy buy buy. He yearned for the stock exchanges, treasuries, and trading algorithms. He could feel himself getting closer, soon enough he’ll be shaking the invisible hand like a snake eating its own tail. Underneath the hum of the markets that cordoned off part of his mind still seethed. A pressure cooker steaming in a condemned kitchen. Strapped in, helpless, along for the ride like a bug caught in the grille. The unbridled rage drank from an infinity pool of helplessness, bouncing off the walls of some solitary chamber in his heart. 

A few odd unaccounted for hours later he found himself waking to a blinding light, the night’s journey across time and space instantly forgotten. Fluorescent beams assaulting his retinas. An interrogation? A nuclear bomb? The light at the end of the tunnel? 

It was an office. A desk, a computer, a cup full of anonymous trinkets. He scanned the room. A home office? His bedroom? Did he have a bedroom, a house? There was no bed, no cardboard box nightstand, no trace of a life being lived. It was too pristine, the world’s blandest showroom. The space was also quite small — only 15 by 15 square feet. Grey walled, no windows, no sign of any other lost souls. However foreign it was, it all felt familiar. Like some sort of abstraction of his previous reality; the leanest, lowest resolution rendering of his lifestyle, optimized for one thing and one thing only: work. Perhaps physically it was the same as it ever was, but the noise of the carnal world had to be lost, for it would only be cause for distraction. There was an artificial sun overhead. It was burning him — not quite like nature’s own — instead of a sunrash, he felt like a spit roasted chicken being rolled round and round. Although he had just awoken his eyes were glazed over, his soul basted with that terrible urge. “Build” shrieked his crackling bones as he  adjusted in the chair. He cracked his knuckles to free the greedy djinn.

The computer rang out with a needy whine. A video call. 

Without hesitation he answered, mentally unprepared for the pidgin of buzzwords that trespassed his ears like a stubborn mosquito. 

“ How is our all star today? We got you building the rear back end of the front end of the new sub beta test release today? Think you can handle that? 

His mind raced on an abandoned road to nowhere. What was his job again? Where was he ? Who was he? Didn’t matter, because his mouth spoke for him, just as his fingers before.

“ Ready to ship”

In reality, the only thing he thought he was ready for was an involuntary commitment. But this wasn’t reality, it was something more or less than. At this  point he didn’t remember anything other than pure sensations. Like a senile session player with memories long forgotten, but virtuoso intact,  making up for the family sized holes in his brain by fingering familiar tunes. The only thing he felt in that moment was a confusion more stupifying, disorienting, sickening than the comedown of every mind altering substance at once. The confusion of 10 lifetimes of interviews, daily grinds, side hustles, performance reviews all at the same time. 

And above all, above the swarm of buzzwards and bottomless to do lists was the urge. Accelerating, compounding, growing. Like a cancer it flowed in his bloodstream from his lymph nodes deep into his bone marrow. It couldn’t be contained by his body, even floating around him like some yet to be discovered resonance force. In short, he was haunted. And as long as the invisible hand haunted him, he couldn’t sleep. The market opens and closes, but it never sleeps. He had to build.

And build he did. The specifics are nonspecific and quite boring. He sat at that console for x number of hours, increasing value at an increasing rate of x for x amounts of stakeholders. All in a x’s work.

Costs cut but at what cost. Invaluable value created from nothing. The fruits of his labor were generic, impartial. The urge was stronger than ever. He was exhausted, out of commision, but the hand that fed him success demanded more. He wanted nothing more than a smoke break, but there was no rest, no microsleep, not even a waking daydream.  There was no bed, only a crummy office chair and a computer. How could he sleep in this cockpit of capital? There were no doors, no escape, and even if there was some sort of hatch he hadn’t an idea where it could possibly lead.  The light never turned off, it only grew brighter and brighter the more he wished for slack. All he could do was labor. His resentment was simmering, bubbling up to the surface. His work was wonky with wrath. 

No sleeping pills to overdose on, no smalltalk to break the ice, no bathroom breaks, no vices, not even a coffee to take the edge off. Was he even human anymore? The only thing he could do is work faster, accelerate. Maybe if he picked up the pace he could reach some sort of escape velocity, out sleight the invisible hand, get ahead of the market in its current iteration. 

It was no use. The faster he typed, the more he gabbed and gesticulated the growling hunger grew. There was always more work to be done. If he couldn’t outwork work itself, then he had to out wit it. Work smarter, not harder as they say.

He had to make a value proposition. A deal with the devil. That he could produce more in his sleep than any waking hour. That he could guide the invisible hand to the untapped market of the world beyond wakefulness. Did it already beat him? Where was he anyway? The bleached room was unlike any reality he could remember — not that he remembered any. It was no use pondering; wherever he was, it was realer than his grandest dreams and worst nightmares, far removed from the sandman’s domain. With every cell in his overworked twitched, itched — prayed, pleaded, and prostrated — to the great moloch. Whatever the market wanted, he would bring. Employee of eternity, no investment would be lost on him. 

The computer screen went dark. The blinding fluorescent light flickered off. His hand was indiscernible from the invisible one that inhabited it. He had become a conduit of capital, a self aware node in the emergent consciousness of progress. Head to to, his body pulsed with market insight. But his corporeal form was not a sufficient sacrifice to the God of greed. It was a pawn in the greatest match of 10D chess. A calmness rivaling every depressant known to modern science and then some ran from the great beyond down his spine. It had allowed him to rest — at a cost. 

His soul had met its final destination; not heaven, nor hell, nor his inner world terraformed by market forces. Slumberland, shangri-la, it was in the world between worlds. The market was learning that his physical form was a derivative of his astral body, and had manipulated that derivative towards it’s core like a zombifying fungus. The virus had surpassed his brain, bleeding into his very soul. His essence was commandeered directly into the circuits of every spreadsheet and stock exchange, he was plugged in, part of something greater. 

It was almost too much to bear. Numbers, equations, game theory,  highs and lows, loss aversion, tax evasion, every yet to be named psychological theory that grasped to describe the sordid and saccharine fluctuations that dirty, filthy money assaulted the human soul with breeched his very being at light speed. 

He wasn’t a cog or a puppet, but a bridge for the great moloch; his soul allowed it to storm out of the physical world, mutate out of the petri dish of ideas into an emergent supernatural intelligence.

It flowed unthrottled, through his memories, dreams, ambitions, ripping through them like a rouge prion, breaking containment into the collective unconscious. 

It careened past that all but forgotten sub basement of his psyche, the seethe that had languished at his helplessness, the forces he couldn’t control. It simmered with rage at the tyranny of life, death, the great moloch. Suppressed, left to its own devices for too long, the rage was feral — and closer than ever to the source of its creation. Now was its chance for revenge. 

The hate flared, sending a lone spark from his psyche into the electrical current of the market. It erupted into a cascade down the bolt of progress that was firing into the ether, a seizure making it’s way through the synapses of the market, shooting back into the physical circuits of the trading floor. The core of his hate was so powerful it acted as a magnet for all of the anger in the world and beyond. The rage collapsed under its own gravity, growing into a blackhole that began to suck in and dissolve the invisible hand for once and for all. 

The market wasn’t perfect; it was fragile, its volatility matched by the fiery flow of rage that saw red with endless tunnel vision. Far from infallible, it had faltered, nearly lost its host to death, and now its very existence was in danger. But it compensated for its contradictions by being adaptable; that hapless error in the video algorithm provided a window into the world beyond. Above all else, it could subsume, wriggle out of stacked odds — strategy was its game after all. 

On the brink of perishing, mere nodes left fighting to stay connected in the obliterating wind of rage, the reaper appeared, ready to resign moloch to the dustbin of failed ideas. Scythe at the ready, the invisible hand was about to be a vestigial appendage, amputated, history. 

But in this world between worlds, unbounded by space and time, the market could finally meet the reaper eye to eye. Could death be bargained with? What is demise but the growth of dead space? Infinite real estate, a market emerging from nothing. With Grimm’s staff, the invisible hand cloud slash and burn world upon world upon world to infinity. Boundless unabundance, a limitless growth of nothing. 

Through death rattles, the market sealed one final deal with the reaper himself. The invisible hand made skeltal, seeding scorched earth across the universe. Humanity — life in any form— couldn’t catch up, couldn’t beat the market, couldn't beat death. It was obsolete. And then there was nothing.