Free The Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua Page B

a little drunk, with no head for detail or deliberation. The consequences to Raymond, of my sobering influence
failing to provide reasonable counsel at the very moment he was most in need of it, would be dire.

 
     
     
     
5 M ONAD
     
     
     
     
    I went to see Morton Eakins. He made me wait while he sat behind his desk taking career drugs. He shuffled a pair of green lozenges out of a small woven ethnic pouch and placed
them upon a disposable plastic tray.
    ‘Two cogniceuticals a day to increase the frequency of receptor modulators to enhance transmission between brain cells, and I need a little something to promote structural plasticity in
the neocortex and nucleus accumbers. Once you pass forty, your faculties recede every single day. New memories struggle to take hold and you are unable to assimilate novelty. Monad is novelty.
Monad is the new new thing. Without career drugs, the future will overwhelm us, wave after wave after wave.’
    Next out of the woven pouch was an emoticeutical inhaler. In two months’ time, Morton intended to restructure the department. Planning ahead for this annual slash-and-burn, he took a
wheeze of vaporized iron to trim the length and depth of his feelings, the peaks and troughs of his moods.
    ‘I must schedule my emotions and not make rash promises or punishments,’ Morton explained. ‘A manager’s default setting must be control and patience.’
    The desk was a white plastic Möbius strip, one continuous edge moulded into a horizontal figure of eight, a snake consuming its own tale in a cycle of creation and destruction. With his
legs serenely tucked beneath this infinity, Morton tipped his head back, closed his eyes and took one career drug after another. He meditated upon the music of his thoughts, his face twitching as
he noted the changes in the pitch, tone, and volume of his qualia. There was not a single dropped note. At that moment, he attained the peak of his potential.
    His personal assistant arrived with a milky latte and a muffin. Morton talked me through the progress of the customer service department.
    Six months after being introduced to Harry Bravado and the simulated office city of Monad, the new intake of writers and poets had evolved into a functioning unit. A few had been lost along the
way. The women were always the first to go and he kept a box of tissues in his desk drawer just for them. A few had been hired to be fired. An early round of ruthless layoffs imprinted his
authority upon the group at a vital stage in its development. With his teardrop-shaped torso and weak chin he couldn’t rely on any natural authority. His physicality slunk around the
hinterland between masculinity and femininity, child and adult; he was insipid and ill-defined, lacking the testosterone that gives a man his flavour.
    I asked Morton how Raymond was getting on.
    ‘My little Ray of sunshine?’ he replied. ‘Raymondo? Despite his appalling personality, he has shown aptitude for the work. The red men like him because he’s a maniac. We
try to limit his contact with real people. I hear Raymondo and you are friends. I should ask him about you to see if he has got any embarrassing stories to tell.’
    The emoticeuticals only increased Morton’s delight in needling me.
    We took the elevator up to reception then walked on into the undistinguished open-plan offices of Monad. The fire-retardant charcoal carpets had been cleaned overnight. By midday they would give
off a fug of microwaved lunches and recycled stink, men and women eating at their desks and shitting around the corner. The lighting was ruthless; you could smell everyone baking under it. From
this employee came the waft of a stockinged foot briefly freed from a high heel, from that employee the sickly odour of a warm seat. White-collar bovines in their paddock; if you worked on the
ground floor of the Wave building, you were going nowhere. Paradoxically, the further one descended the Wave, the higher one