"Moon Military Mission goes forward"
That genetics discussion I had with Jarod brought about a kind of sensory memory I thought I had safely put on hold. Some things just don’t go away, though.
My first writing job was with a small bio product company tucked in among the lesser known WWC divisions. It had a name that it seemed to me to obscure the division’s function, which was in the high-tech pharmaceuticals field. They did research and development and both were closely guarded.
In a marketing sense, which was why I was hired, the name of the company was a disaster. It would make branding a nightmare. CABEL. It sounded so sinister, like a cabal of people meeting to overthrow the world government. It wasn’t until after the probationary period for new hires that I found out it stood for Company to Automate Beautiful Eternal Life, whatever that meant. In a marketing sense, what do you do with that?
It was at CABEL that I discovered things I may have been too young to really grasp the significance of.
My first day at work was exciting. I got off the tram, a solar-powered light rail system that most people in Technopolis used. I eyed the solid modern three-story building with satisfaction. I had landed a good job with a company run by the most powerful corporation in the world, World Wide Corporation. I had arrived.
I studied the windows, looking for clues as to what kind of work lay behind them, pleased with myself for finding a job that my mother would have been proud of.
“Good benefits?” she would always ask when I told her of an upcoming interview. The larger the company, the happier it made her. I always said I wanted to do something that satisfied my artistic temperament, but she pooh-poohed that, dismissing it as nonsense in the face of earning a good, secure living. At sixteen, I wanted to run away to join a traveling theatre company and write plays for them, like Shakespeare, but either she didn’t know who Shakespeare was or something about the bohemian life frightened her. I ended up grounded for months. In those days, you didn’t defy Mother.
I had arrived in what my mother would think was her idea of Corporate Heaven. A company recognized throughout the world (“My son, the adman for WWC!”) that provided all the benefits a mother could ever want for her son. I liked it because I would be secure, moderately well off, and if all went well, would have enough time off to write the screenplays I knew were in me and would contribute something truly unique, beautiful, artistic. I would bend to the corporate yoke not to shill for products I didn’t believe in, but as a means to a much more satisfying end. Writing the Great American Screenplay. At least that was my expectation. Turned out, only my mother was happy.
I should have known something was wrong as soon as I found my cubbyhole. I looked for the nearest window, hoping for an inspiring view of the Banana River and weather changes coming in from the Atlantic. From the outside, there were lots of windows. Up here on the third floor, the view was strange and artificial. There was the Banana River, all right, but it was bright, beautiful, and unchanging. Where the windows should have been were projections of a subtropical paradise, untouched by so much as a breeze. What my soul craved was a dramatic view of the ever-changing Florida weather. What I would get was virtual reality instead of the merely real.
Still, I would get used to it and I started out enthusiastically and with what I thought was a positive attitude. I wrote words for a little ditty extolling the charms of a chemical face peel and then a script for a commercial for a home wrinkle removal kit. My boss grunted her approval. My mother called up all her friends and told them to watch the commercial when it aired. I was a hero in the old neighborhood, a far cry from the ditzy kid they remembered who wanted to write plays.
One of the things I discovered at CABEL was that this company might be obscure, but the product it was gearing up to sell would be huge. It was a kind of gene therapy that would help the user live longer and look younger without the usual lengthy surgeries and pill-taking and body-building that was making this division a lot of money already. Longevi-lite they called it. It was all ‘need to know’ stuff and we writers worked on only one part of the campaign, not knowing what the others were working on. The project manager would coordinate all the parts, but even she didn’t have the whole picture.
What we were writing appeared to be a scripted Visi-tainment, a weekly series that spanned six weeks, but the picture I was getting from things I picked up here and there, things overheard, was that the series was a disguise for what was really a long commercial for the benefits of Longevi-lite.
Here’s the thing: Visi-entertainment did have commercial products embedded within the drama or comedy, but everyone knew it and everybody had an opinion about it. Part of the viewing fun was to see how many of these you could spot. Like a new form of brainwashing, a spin-off of what Vance Packard’s Hidden Persuaders from the 1950s attempted to bring to light. But what we were doing was more insidious than that. The scary thing was that people were getting a commercial without their consent or knowledge.
Being still young and eager to do something wonderful for the world, I was alarmed, but the atmosphere, the company culture there pretty much stifled my normal instinct to discuss it with anyone. We were encouraged to keep to ourselves and communicate only at company-endorsed meetings. Visi-communication with our peers was forbidden.
The more senior members of the writing and marketing team, who were pretty much all I saw, were cut from the same corporate cloth. They had views that were similar, writing styles that were similar, and had only good things to say about our project, the product, their bosses, and the company. I didn’t know it then because it was my first job, but in other companies, most people in the workplace had a lot to say about how things were being run. They go to lunch and discuss their wrong-headed bosses and what they would do to change the world if they were in charge. They texted each other all day long, complaining, whining, and, in general, venting over the latest outrage.
At CABEL, no critical word was ever heard, only I was too inexperienced at the time to know that this corporate culture was unusual. Here everyone, except the raw recruits, were all of the same mind: everything was good, everything was going well, and what we didn’t know was none of our business.
Eventually, though, I started to chaff at the uniformity and wanted to show what I really could do, so I took some risks and began to stray from the proscribed path. I was proud of myself when I was called into the project manager’s office. It was about time I was getting noticed for my creativity, which I thought this company could use.
I should have known better.
I had seen others try to deviate. One fellow, Jeffrey, who had been there for more than a year had been the only one who seemed to have thoughts and ideas that were his own. He showed some of them to me and I had to admire what he was doing. One day, he said he was going to show his boss. Maybe get a raise or a promotion. He disappeared for a few days. When he came back, that impish light was gone from his eyes and he was back writing what was asked of him.
Carol Lagerfeld, the project manager, gave me a tight smile. “What is this?” she asked, pointing to the Visi-screen that projected what I had sent her. I was about to reply, but she cut me off.
“You were hired for a particular skill that you have demonstrated adequately in your time here. We have specific needs, business needs, and those are the needs that you were hired to fulfill.”
“Yes, M’am,” I said with what I hoped was a boyish grin, a grin that had worked to my advantage before, “but the project needed some punching up, so I thought taking a more creative approach would…” She was not buying it and I quit trying to sell it.
Her tight smile never wavered. “I can offer you some guidance. WWC has made available some of the best behavioral specialists to help us achieve our corporate mandates. These people are here to help us keep our focus. I can make time for you to see one. At the company’s expense. And, of course, as soon as possible. We have deadlines to meet.”
I was still smiling, but I didn’t know why. I felt a prickling at the back of my neck and a strange hollowness in my stomach.
“Did you read it?” I managed to say, still naively clinging to the belief that it was good work. “It conveys what we want to say in a much fresher way.”
The tight smile was gone. “It will not do. See the behaviorist. That’s all.” She went back to her Visi-screen. I flashed to Jeffrey’s face, light gone from his eyes, then made my decision about the behaviorist. I went to my desk, packed my few personal belongings, and got the hell out of there. I only hoped there was a real door in the lobby to the outside and not some fake projection.
I should have exposed what may have been going on at CABEL, yet something about Lagerfeld’s face that day warned me off taking any action. I should have seen what was right in front of me. Even though I, who had to write about it, couldn’t know what the product was or would do to people, I should have been tipped-off that something subversive was going on with the launch of this new product. One of us needed to bring it to light and that someone was me, but I was no bell-ringer, no whistle-blower. I was only twenty and had pretty much resigned myself that I would be an observer of life, a recorder of life’s quirks. A writer, in other words.
I walked away and I have regretted it. Since then, I have never been without a copy of Atlas Shrugged.
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