The Redline

By Trevor Alan

    Many people living outside an Upper City metropolis live in privation and squalor, so it is a good thing that the charitable ReUs Government has developed the Nation's first Emergency Mental Health Phoneline. Worry not, those who suffer from the vicissitudes of this tumultuous time, one of the therapists at the receiving end of this outreach is more than willing to assist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trevor Alan
• Release date: Jun 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223582465

Book preview

Prologue

I, servant to the lamentations of the invariably damned, with feeble attempts to resile from the grasp of this self-imposed, unrelenting dread, leave this testament to my supplicative questioners.

To preamble this sordid mess, it begins thusly. The infernal subject, suffering a moment of abysmal distress, seeks expeditiously for a lifeline through the current iteration of Alexander Graham Bell’s vitally important creation. A true novel, that. For should one but reach at any corner of their docile domicile, and forsooth, they are likely to find a corded machine the technology of which stretches across twisted dirt and wrought landscape. In venous pattern, these wires, connecting the loquacious, the languid, the lecherous, and more aptly, the lugubrious to whatever destination their auditory receptacles have deemed worthy.

When satisfaction is gained by registry of the proper sense, usually from a source whose origin can be any distance from present geography, the intended ceremony of whatever wont commences. Once this jubilation has ceased, one need but replace the device back in its obsequious cradle for application at a later moment in time. For our titillating prehensile digits, whose tips sequence numbers in determined patterns, can summon forth a percussive personality at any arbitrarily dictated behest.

Via the connections of these technological tendrils, they, whose summons is forwarded to my immediate cuboid office space, seek desperately for a righteous retinue of companionship, compassion, and clarity. They find themselves verily at my merciful machination. I, the plaintive recipient of this dolorous summons, am alerted by the sardonic repetitive roster of three rings, mediumly toned, in an audio presentation punctuated predictably by a silent pause between each repetition, and this continues on until I answer it with a contrived alacrity. This first part, you must understand, is imperative, for I must instantly engender the caller with a slight effervescent elation, one that momentarily grants a reprieve from whatever enigmatic malady has compromised their psychology. You see, somewhere, a clandestine crack persists defiantly in the caller’s nebula of neurons. A nebula whose solid electrical tendrils create the backdrop of an, albeit hitherto, functioning, healthy mind. As wires misfire mercilessly and the resulting cracks spread like wild lightning, the damned seethes and sways. In the midst of this chaotic torment, a tempest tatters tenaciously, the traipse of which tears the threaded tapestry of the sufferer’s consciousness. Acute in its arrival and chronically persistent, suicidal depression looms clandestine aloft dark lurching cumulous clouds. Bulbous. Black. Bundling a boon ready to crush with its torrential weight and grievous gravity.

Once this storm forces the caller to reach out, via the medium and marvel of telecommunication, I am tasked with administering adroitly the panacea of passivity and equanimity. Once a calm is established, the task is over. It is on to the next sad soul.

This performance always ensues at the most delicate and integral of times. One remissive statement, one poorly spoken word, has the potential to jettison the afflicted down the verisimilitude of the correct path, ending, of course, on the wrong one. Either directive is every moment at my discretionary disposal. The wrong word becomes a vitriolic poison with the capacity to permanently incapacitate. The wrong word can be murder. But what, my dear reader, is the opposite of manslaughter? With what do you charge a surgeon whose esoteric practice infringes upon fate’s fatalistic fascinations for its intended? A patient deemed by the democratic rubric of jurisprudence to be less than worthy of this intervener’s practice. What crime, I ask, is the surgeon prosecuted for? None. Therefore, with inference given to this logic, one is not verily guilty for refusing to suffer fate’s insistence.

Chapter One

The Thirteenth Floor

The fourteenth floor. Looking out through the glass window, just steps away from my cubicle, I can see the dotted line of the insectoid inhabitants below, their paths flowing in a pattern of hive minded unison. I, suffering from delusional micropsia, squint in a fruitless effort to transfer my consciousness thirteen stories downward to their flashy flowing flitter. To fall in step with those intransigent dots down below, away from this stifling stall of solemn squares, is to ambulate along a predetermined path of mysteriously coordinated intent. Unburdened by simply lacking the understanding of my presence, their shapeless forms are the unsuspecting victims of my lingering leer.

Hey, Mo, you going out for lunch?

Paunchy Paul interrupts my revery. I am foolish to have stood out in the open, but a window to the world outside is a tempting call to ignore. Seeking this view has put me in direct line of sight to my cubicle-neighbor Paul.

While turning toward my cubby, I rejoin with, It’s Mordechai. To call me Mo would be an imprecation to my mother. I do not appreciate being referred to in the diminutive. I tell him this, but I’m looking at my desk, making sure nothing obscene glows on its tan surface. He is of the easily offended kind.

If Paul were to take an assessment—of this instance, not of my desk—he would realize, like experiencing déjà vu, that I have implored him not to refer to me by the first two letters of my name. However, he would have to possess the adequate mental acumen to render such an on-the-spot introspection.

Of course, he continues...

Uh, sure, sorry. Anyways, if you are heading out to lunch, would you mind getting me something? I can pay you.

This song and dance every week. One year ago, I fell in step with it. Where, in the spirit of magnanimity, I agreed to Paul’s seemingly innocent request. Shortly after agreeing to this, I was inundated with multiple orders of varying complexity. You see, we have only forty-five minutes for lunch, and no one wants to leave for it.

Once I agreed to get Paul lunch—the hive mind again?—it was like everyone intuited I was taking orders. In acquiescence to peer pressure, I took down as many orders as I could, jotting them down as I passed a seemingly endless hallway of cubicles toward the exit. Looking over this scrawl of requests, I sullenly realized my mistake.

There is exists, two blocks away, a burger joint. That day I learned that meat, bread, cheese, and produce could be fashioned in extreme contortions of improbable multiplications, algebraic variables as confounding as the constitutions that founded them.

Paul, the sniveling pig, had ordered a meat sandwich with such a variety of vegetables that trucks would have to travel in four different directions to acquire such a medley. Imagine me, the great Mordechai, reduced to a timorous tenor by the strain of ordering in such superfluous specificity. On this burger, for Paul, green bell peppers, jalapenos, onions, lettuce. Do you have guac? How about horseradish? No cheese for Charlie, he is lactose intolerant. Please no pickles for Nicholas—that’s right, I think. And for Bethany? What did she want again? Burger well-done with tomato and pepper. Let us see—no lettuce for Lexi, and for me? Just a plain hamburger, please. I remember verily the cook, nestled behind his steamy grill, him unable to perceive the great chagrin that had seeped into my countenance that day. Oh, to order in such an exhaustive way, my face was as red as the man behind the fryer. Returning to the office, I learned that either I was a nonsensical order taker, or the man behind the register was, for everyone’s order was woefully wrong It will be a surprise to no one that I was not asked again to fetch fast food. Except, of course, by brave Paul here, who would probably be happy to shovel a bloated meat patty into his cavernous crevice.

No, Paul, I will not be getting food; I would certainly take your order if I were. 

I abandon Paul to his own devices, which usually comprise the avoidance of his duties in order to toward his impenetrable focus toward the avian rats outside. With deliberate haste, I make toward the elevator. Down the hallway—which would undoubtably be full of cubicles if we could all float—which is serendipitously clear of coworkers, and I, wishing to take advantage of this, make a break for the exit lift. I want to run to that iron cage of solitude, its vertical inclinations of strategic discernment beckoning me to enter through its horizontally opposing twin doors, a paradise of lonely interment. People fear it for its inclination to stick on certain floors, but I pray, with Christian reverence, that it will stall for hours, encasing me in a dark embrace. For then, I could abandon guilt free, my onerous employ.

A light moves left to right among small rounded numbered displays, from 1 to 25 all along a steel strip above the elevator doors. The light, however, skips the number 13. Not that it was there to be graced by the indicator’s luminescence. Oh no, by virtue of its nefarious portent of disaster, it thereby necessitates its complete absence. Unlucky thirteen, as if bad luck were to bend time and space in order to dispense upon some foolish knave a physically manifested malintent. Also, there was the public relations side. It would not do for the nation’s sole provider of suicide prevention and mental health assistance to willfully acknowledge that its core apparatus for thwarting depression’s death grip was comfortably situated on the thirteenth floor of what easily resembled a giant tombstone. This drab slab of commercial real estate inhabited by busy-bodied worker bees who take life-confirming solace in the execution of their death-defying job performance, occupying a space which by arbitrary edict exists on the thirteenth plane on top of this garish sky-penetrating concrete offense to the gods. An edifice born of the will to extend upward into the heavens so that we may bask in suspended equanimous bliss with our creators and dearly departed loved ones. All this in imitation of the Tower of Babel, of course, and hopefully with an equally disjointed summation.

The elevator opens, and I step inside. I press L for Lobotomy. Lobby. The door closes, but not before a hand interrupts the mechanism, and with a steel grind, the doors recede from each other. A grinning Tommy steps in.

Tommy Boy, and he is but a precious boy, has been working in the building for a few months. Already he is considered the top therapist on-site. He has talked dozens of people down from the precipice, and the police have even transferred calls directly to his cubicle. I have to say, his naïve and eager attitude is born of a legitimate excitement that persists verily from an occupation whose sole purpose is for all intents and purposes an endeavor to protect the soul. His behavior reflects an insatiable need to deliver unto the mentally meek masses a lifeline to which they can cling for dear life. And once this line has been delivered to its needy client, Tommy Boy is off the phone and ready to reap the rapturous praise that follows a successful execution of his occupation.

What a putz.

Afternoon, Mordechai. Isn’t it a beautiful day?

Ah yes, the placatory perfunctory parlance produced when placed within personal proximity of another person. A being who shares the same floor in the same building and is engaged in similar occupational processes as I. Even so, the placatory perfunctory only establishes with irrefutable result that Tommy and I are bereft of any common interests, leaving only one topic. It reveals itself, like a small island in the middle of the sea toward which Tommy makes with haste. This copse of palm tree on little more than a mound of sand is where conversation is thusly forced to refuge. This is where Tommy chooses to flee instead of braving the uncertain. He is left adrift. Doomed to wade in the blue tepid water that churns blithely under the wake of his insufferably banal banter.

Why, I do believe it is so, my dear Tommy Boy. Nary a cloud in the sky. The bright solar graces us with her far-reaching rays.

Tommy smiles at me. His lips recede, contorting his facial features sideways. This contortion reveals a moist maroon gumline beset by glistening white pearls, thrust into prominence by Tommy’s short dark, rather boyish, hair and his consistent wardrobe of black office attire.

Wow, you are always so poetic, Mordechai. I could learn so much from you. Maybe one day we can do a side by side on our calls.

The audacity, the unmitigated temerity, to think that he, a young pup whose virtue undoubtably persists in conspiracy with his explicitly perturbing nature, could ever, even momentarily, be graced with the enlightening gratification that accompanies acceptance into my auspices.

Maybe one day, Tommy. Until then.

I act like we were parting ways, but we continue to share space in the descending coffin of death. Moments like these, I genuinely appreciate my introverted nature. I could ride an elevator in silence for hours. Is that a ghost next to me or a person? It matters not while trapped in an iron bolus descending Hell’s moist esophageal tract retreating anterograde into the depths of its churning peristaltic terminus.

Tommy is visibly anxious by this unforeseen slight. His idea of a cooperative exchange of ideas in pursuit of honing and precising his craft—denied. He shrinks into an uncomfortable-looking mass. He retrieves a rolled-up newspaper from the hollow of his axilla and struggles to peruse it with a desperate stare.

I stare at the missive stuck flat to the elevator wall. It is there to be noticed upon immediate entry, a pasted poster worn with age that reads If you suspect a Red, use the Redline. The picture of a red rotary phone is superimposed over the image of three shock troopers dressed in black riot gear, colloquially known as the Blackguards. The Redline, of course, refers to the bloodred phone the presence of which is ubiquitous in today’s sophic society.

As our shared internment apparatus descends quietly down a predetermined shoot, Tommy’s pantomime of leisurely perusal is betrayed by a stream of subversive sweat.

Why are you so nervous?

I smile.

––––––––

X

The building lobby mimics a grand hall. Walking in, one is met with bright glistening marble floors upon which blue rugs and carpets float on a sea of smooth white reflective tile. Chained from the ceiling, grand chandeliers dangle, festooned with teardrop shaped diamonds. Yes, no expense is spared when it comes to creating first impressions. How funny that these impressions give no inkling as to what actually happens inside this grotesque monolithic monstrosity of misappropriated goodwill materialized at the state’s behest and on the taxpayers’ dime.

On the side is an attendant’s desk, small and out of the way. Pay no attention to the working man, but look at those chandeliers. The opulence of the lobby is matched only by its gratuitous size. How much empty space does one need? In the center is a red phone resting on top of a glass table. Much like a fire extinguisher and just as red, its purpose is for emergencies. The Redline is used to put out a fire of sorts, if it spreads unchecked like a wild animal. This kind of fire is of but one kind: treason. It scorches in ceaseless defiance to man and nature. Like the fires of a gas crater, treason’s flame licks eternal at all who dare approach and cooks all who would dare to linger.

On the opposite side from the hidden attendant’s station rests a ginormous framed photo of America’s authoritarian author–President John F Kennedy. Twenty-five years since an assassination attempt ended with the premature termination of his wife, Kennedy made history by usurping power from all branches of government. He imminently instilled himself as the permanent president, ensuring that everyone was well aware that this was now a new the ReUnited States of ReAmerica. This was all done so a Reunited America could consolidate public opinion and combat Russian aggression. With a solid unified party of the people, the government was creatively pushing back on the pernicious influence spread through the enemy’s lies that were slowly taking root in various institutions at the time. Good or bad, ReAmerica’s two-decade fixation on Russia, as well as both countries’ ill-inspired race for the complete domination of the space above, has left the ReUSA a distracted mess. The very fabric of society is ripping apart slowly as if it were a cloth bag the burden of which is so strenuous, the very stitching begins to split apart at the semes.

I exit through a rotating door into the sweltering heat. My neuronal circuitry immediately begins the arduous task of metabolizing the tsunami of sensory stigmata that can only exist in an overpopulated metropolis. Gray-and-tan buildings rise defiantly. Their glasswork shines and sparkles in the light of day. Above, a network of highways stretch across the sky, connecting buildings to one another, a matrix suspended like a web providing the city safe travel from all over to all over, while underneath these networks of expedient organized travel, the downtrodden and penniless hopers seethe and boil over, waiting with eager, starving grins for the people to return the ground of whence they came. Like musculature attached to bone, these highways are an integral piece of architecture which allows for convenient transit fifty stories above the ground, a marvel for aiding ground traffic congestion and maintaining the idea that the wealthy are like angels transporting themselves aloft the clouds, looking down at the rabble with wanton supercilious self-aggrandizing satisfaction. Not unlike arteries and veins, these highways high in the sky provide the city with labor and goods from all over. Giant tractor trailers, busses full of outer-city day workers, giant two-lane semi-trucks harboring tons of goods with huge exhaust pipes billowing congestive black smog for struggled inhalation—with speed and determination, they all make their way to and from the city core, helping to maintain the tedious status quo for another day. So much effort is expended keeping this metropolis afloat.

On a sunny day like today, one can stare up in squinted wonder as the eyes strain to comprehend just how high these building rises go, all connected by the sinuous tendrils of suspended roads and sky bridges. Some buildings are so tall, perception curves them inward near the top, creating the impression of a looming group of bullies pensively positioned to pounce at any notice. In the streets, the occasional blue or white automobile is seen between swarming ranks of yellow cabbies. Clouds of exhaust plume from chrome pipes in their rears, the humid air trapping this pollution in a stifling barrier of secondhand poison. Caloric waves distort distant blocks in a reflective mirrorlike pall. Illusory puddles form on the street and sidewalks, deceptive images from our great solar.

Groups of people walk by in both directions. Seemingly seamless is their navigation. Passing pigmented streaks of flesh inside spindled splotches of waving fabrics. Inscrutable faces of the deliberately expedient. This is where I mesh in the moving crowd, granted anonymity within their countless number.

The incessant cacophonic cornucopia of noise is set aloft and reverberated off concrete and glass. In this there exists a deafening sort of silence, for the auditory neuronal pathways can only deliver a modicum of detail to the sense-making prefrontal cortices. In the absence of precision, there is a veritable voluminous gravity of crushing random racket in a state of such resonance granted through multitudes of disparate noise, one is bereft of what exact originations these stigmata stem from. In this consternation, one is left with a kind of focus caved in and refined by the city’s constant acoustic inundations.

Stepping in tow with the herd, I walk a few blocks. The city bustles in the wake of its own embellishments. Take but one second to process the physical demonstrations of the vice that exists implicitly in the fabrics of a society built by and for the arrogant aggrandizing aristocrats. They with pompous pageantry display themselves to the unwitting public in noticeably grand and gratuitous ways, an expensive gesture made for the prime purpose of patting one another on the shoulder.

Making their way in waves, frothing at their gaping mouths for goods, groups of fat-pocket patricians patronize the storefronts in a rush to equip themselves with the latest and greatest of whatever accoutrement their unquenchable lust demands, and the chatter of their incessant negotiating combined with the hot air of the vender’s swanking rejoinders produce a din so obnoxious, it serves only to reinforce upon passing the notion that one is truly at the center of Upper City high-end commerce, an experience that perpetuates itself on the underpinnings of ritual capitalism. A sort of merciful mercantilism for those who are able to muster the ever-increasing prerequisite cash flow necessary for continued economic participation. The Burroughs and Lower-Class portions of the city are fecund with those whose financial gumption has plateaued. Unable to keep up with the invariable inflation that increases apace in vengeful perpetuity among an upwardly evolving society, which by the second is demanding more and supplying less. Estates resplendent with wealth are transformed overnight into vacant lots replete with the ghosts of the inhabitants who had once possessed the means to live in such a holy, now hollowed, place.

X

I once took a call from a gentleman who had been an inventor and CEO for some kind of high-tech communications conglomerate. He was on the brink of manufacturing a system of complex information networks that could be accessed from a computer tower anywhere in the world. I know, much like a telephone. Anyways, a competing company had started a rumor that this particular gentleman was a Russian sympathizer. The man was locked up without any sort of due process. He lost his fortune and startup company overnight. Of course, the company that had reported him absorbed all the technology and accompanied intellectual properties that had been made available to them at wholesale. With it and the financial backing of an overseas oligarch, they created something so creative labeled the Wide Web Accessible. It would later be revealed by the famous female journalist Roxanne Delicious that both the company and financially liberal oligarch were of Russian origins and now they had control of the online information landscape. In response, the ReUSA banned access to any computer that is outside of the ReUSA Local Intra-Network. There are a few such computers around, but, like telephone booths only rarer, they exist for the purposes of researching addresses, accessing the Electronic Mail Database, or for simply checking the state-approved news.

It would seem I have digressed. This gentleman who had been interred unfairly and much against any will of his own was finally released from the Arizona Desert Prison Colony. He had a little money left, and with it he hired a lawyer. Since the Federal Bureau of Capitalist Preservations had access to the publicly available knowledge that a Russian company had framed him, thus robbing him of an idea that was sure to help everyone around the world, he argued that he should have been released post-haste and with commensurate compensation for having been unjustly treated. His determined argument and distraught grievance were laid in complete exposure before a