December 29, 2021 • 41 mins
Author Rebecca Campbell (@canadianist) comes on to read a short story about a working an office job amidst a climate disaster.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Harrison starts the episode and I don't trust Robert today.
You want me to start? I don't trust Robert today.
It's time, Garrison, it's time for you to learn. Wow,
my advice is a tonal shrieking. I am not doing that.
Everyone's gonna be like, oh, Garrison's just copying Robert's tone
and cadence. You mean you mean they're making sounds with
my mouth. Yeah, that's that's how. That's how, that's how
(00:26):
communication works. Start the episode with that and trigger everybody
like me. You use a microphone, it's very real. Yeah,
you thieve we're recording. Let's let's do this. Hey, it's
time for stories. We love. We love stories here at
(00:47):
Etiquet Happen Here pod the podcast about how things are
kind of falling apart and too maybe some ways to
put them back together. Um, I'm Garrison. I'm starting this
episode today. I'm not sure why roberts here. I'm real hungover.
Robert is real hung because I didn't trust Robert to
do his job today. But I trust you, Garrison. You
didn't really not trust me to do my job. I know.
(01:09):
That's that's that's fun. We also we also have Christopher
here and and we have uh writer Rebecca Campbell. Hello, hey,
and uh, why don't you briefly explain who who you
(01:29):
are and what what's what's going on today? Okay, Well,
I'm a Canadian writer and sometimes I'm a teacher, but
mostly I just write really sad stories about climate change
and ghosts and aies and near future stuff like that. Um.
This story I'm reading is called thank You for Your Patients.
It came out and Reckoning for I guess last year.
(01:51):
And uh, it's based on my partner's time when he
was working in a call center and the kind of
nightmares stories that I heard from them every time he
home from work. But it's also about me being on
the other side of the country from the part of
the world that I love the most, which is the
Pacific Northwest. Um. And you know, watching Fukushima a few
years ago and watching wildfires a few weeks ago, and um,
(02:15):
being separated from the things that are important to you, um,
as they're all falling apart. Well, I'm just excited that
this podcast is now two fifths Canadian, so that's that's
the main thing I'm excited about. Uh. No, oh my god,
I just a tim Horton's cup just appeared next to me.
It's terrible donut home I have I do have a
(02:38):
Tim Hortons cupt in my kitchen. Um, anyway, let's uh,
let's let's let's start this, start this, start this reading,
Let's eat this popsicle stand as they say a thing,
Let's continue, Let's let's eat this. Okay, thank you for
(03:07):
your patience. I'm lucky because they replaced a bunch of
chairs last month and I got a new one. A
good chair is important when you spend ten hours a
day in a cubicle talking to strangers about their problems.
I've been here three years and worked on most of
Western Morgan's services, which means I can, with no thought,
help grandma set up her WiFi, or troubleshoot banking software,
(03:30):
or set up your cell phone plan, or help you
with some app designed to find your soulmate that nevertheless
feels you with hopelessness. I can't help you with the hopelessness.
It's nonstandard, but I'm Western Morgan's floater, and Jordi, your
Kirsty just dropped me. Where the calls are heavy or
turnover as high. On Twitter, I can answer questions within
five seconds of some asshole in Toronto saying, what the
(03:51):
fuck my TV doesn't see the house network, and I respond,
I'm sorry to hear that Toronto asshole. Let's see if
I can help. I'm at possible to rile because I've
heard everything, every possible stupid question, every strange request regarding
lapsed policies and mispayments, every paranoid rand, every sort of
impotent rage. The management is shitty and the customers are irritable,
(04:13):
but there's beauty and problem solving. The really bad stuff
started at the end of last month, when I had
to do on one on one majority team lead for
the floor. I've been fielding a bunch of questions regarding
a recent patch that had broken everything. I had this rhythm,
hitting my thirty second age T and typing without thinking,
Mark here, how can I help you? But one on
(04:36):
one is mandated interruptions, So I listened to Geordy brainstorm
about improving morale. They stopped having barbecues because it was
too expensive, even when the burgers were sawdust and soy. Also,
no one wanted to be outside because Detroit was still burning,
and the PPM up to something like Beijing. Listen to
this Western Morgan idol. Jordy told me we judge three
(04:59):
of the top right calls, and we have a thing
and someone walks away with a Timmy's gift card like
fifty bucks. Jordi said that like it was a good thing.
What about a key fob? I asked, we can't get
out with what without one? After hours? But only management
could hold or the winner gets to wear Janes or
keep their phone for a shift. That didn't write an answer.
(05:20):
The most frustrating thing about Western Morrigan is that team
leads have to hold your phone like you're an untrusted
teenager who's been grounded. I feel like I'm lost in
a cave or a space station. When I do a
lot of overtime. I arrived when it's dark, and I
leave when it's dark. And while sometimes I go around
the corner for coffee or McNuggets, it always feels like
(05:41):
I'm just visiting the world. I don't know what's happened,
if a government's fall on, or if an ice shelf
has collapsed, if Detroit is burning again, or maybe California
or the Great Lakes are dying at a slightly faster
rate than they were before I left for work, never
knowing what's going on outside. I sit in my good
chair and say that sounds frustrating to everyone, no matter
(06:03):
who's talking or what they want. Let me see if
I understand your problem. You could judge, Geordie, Stead said,
still talking about Morrel. You're impartial. You hate everyone. I
don't hate everyone, Georgy, I said reflexively, though, to be fair,
I hate a lot of people here. After my mandated
fifteen minutes with Jordy, I saw that Misty had a
(06:24):
problem with my documentation, which has been rough since they
changed policy on me. She's in the Philippines, where most
of the real work happens. Upper management is all in India.
They only have us because they need Canadian accents on
the phones, and they get tax breaks bringing jobs to
one of the more desolate parts of the country down
when from Detroit, rampant West Nile and of the province's
(06:45):
heavy metals processed at the plant out by the ball
of the baby's born. Here are girls something to do
with residual b p A. Misty is on the other
side of the Pacific in Lagaspi. But you think she
was right here considering how aggressively. She organizes us your
ship at filling out forms. Mark the rite up is
(07:06):
going to kill your rank. We're stack ranked. Every shift
it gets you points you can redeem. You can redeem,
which honestly is worth it for the grocery store gift cards.
Just tell me what I did wrong, Lagaspie. We were
in the middle of a rough month. The flu hit
everywhere at once, and no one could afford to lose
the work, so we had a bunch of people come in,
(07:28):
sick coughs and juicy sneezes all over the floor, and
half the time you got on the elevator and everyone
was gray faced and weaving. I came in over the
weekend to cover Mobile because they lost half their staff,
so I'd been on for eight days by Monday, when
Jordy was manic trying to call people in so he
wouldn't have to go on the phones. He always says,
when we're smoking outside and he's pointedly not looking at
(07:50):
the place where the gam building used to be, It's
not the extra fifty cents an hour, it's the fact
I don't have to deal with people. He hated taking calls.
He offered me overtime so I started coming in at
six and leaving at ten, and I didn't even notice
the weekend. I do remember going home those nights and
thinking how hollow my room felt with my roommates playing
(08:11):
Call of Duty in the living room, and how my
body seemed to vibrate caffeine maybe your pseudophedan. I heard
phantom time warnings and chimes, and when I closed my eyes,
I could see the screen and call after call flooding
the queue. By Saturday, Western Morgan was a haunted house,
but I still wasn't sick. That sounds frustrating. Let me
(08:32):
see if I can help. I was dealing with this
woman on Vancouver Islands who couldn't generate invoices. We'd been
at it for two hours and I could feel her
getting upset when I told her to wipe the whole
system and start again. I could help her with that,
but she was like, no, we'll lose two weeks of work.
There's nothing I can say to that, so we keep
troubleshooting even though it's pointless. Okay, I said, you can
(08:55):
go back to your route invoice and try. Oh, she
said what, And that was it. I didn't hear anything
but the line itself, which just went dead, that kind
of absence you get when someone hangs up on you.
Are you there, ma'am? I called back, but I got
a reorder tone, not voice mail or an old fashioned
busy signal, but the one that means the whole system
(09:16):
is busier, blocked or down. I dropped out of the
queue then, which you're not supposed to do, obviously, and
went looking for Jordy, who was chatting with Kirsty about
Western Morgan idol. I asked if they knew anything, but
of course they didn't. And when I asked if I
could at least grab my phone to see what was happening,
Kirsty did a kind of elementary school teacher sigh. Documentation
(09:37):
for three eight zero your overdue mark. Collar dropped. I
saw that explanation happening across the board. Looks like the
problems at their end. I didn't find out until Moe
came back from Brake Street to wet in the way
you are if you run out into that rain blowing
in from Detroit because you don't want it to touch
(09:57):
your skin, saying earthquake on the West coast, You know
anyone out there? I thought about the woman trying to
get the invoice together for a tiny order of sea
salts from some equally tiny place on Vancouver Island. Her
business so miniscule it's still fit into our cheapest subscription.
In my unsubmitted documentation for Misty, I had written that
(10:18):
her voice sounded like a hopeful but slightly overwhelmed great
aunt trying to make the remote control work. No one,
how bad like nine point six, the worst since forever,
like for hundreds of years, Jesus, I said, Jesus, Jesus,
I've had similar moments on calls. When the shooting happened
in Montreal, not View ma Real, but the one with
(10:40):
the kids ran downtown from McGill and the photographer caught
the girl as the bullet tour at her right kneecap.
I was on the line with this dick wad in
a coworking place on Maisonneuve, who was talking, who was
asking to talk to my supervisor? Then midwine, he stopped
talking like he suddenly didn't care about my attitude. I
could hear his phone pinging, sir, are you there? Can
(11:02):
you hear that it's happening on the street. I can
see a faint popping, voice raised and doors slammed. Then
he cut the call. I kept in the queue. I
helped someone update, I did a subscription renewal. The next person, though,
needed a backup, and that took forever. So we chatted
about hockey until she said, did you hear about Montreal? No, ma'am,
I said, thinking about the sound I may be heard
(11:24):
before his phone cut. Firecrackers, backfires. Some guy shot up
the whole downtown. I think it was terrorists, who knows,
fl Q or Muslims, maybe Red Power fifty dead, but
it was going up every single time ever fresh the page.
She kept going on like this while we did a backup,
and then I made sure everything worked. And it had
been like three hours at that point, and I kept
(11:45):
thinking of the guy in his silence and what was
going on in the streets while we talked about his
log in and how unprofessional I was. I don't have
any friends in Montreal. I went there once to drink
when I was eighteen, but that's it. I just had
that guy and the thump of footsteps fleeing the coworking space.
When I took my break, the rain was falling again,
the faintly gray kind that runs down the sidewalks and
(12:07):
the gutters, and when it builds up enough you can
see it's a little milky because it's full of ash.
If you think too hard about what's running into your
eyes as you stand outside smoking until your pack is empty,
you go eat a twenty four box of tim Bits
or six Big Max, or you stopped for one beer
on the way home, and only leave when they push
you out the door. Geordie was outside. I gave him
(12:29):
a cigarette, even though he doesn't smoke either, and he said,
it doesn't seem to be getting cleaner. Wasn't it supposed
to get cleaner. He grew up in Detroit, though he
was already over here when it burned last year. Maybe
it's safer. The ham is worse. I thought the ham
was supposed to go away. When they sent in the
cleanup cruise. We watched the warm, ash colored water run
(12:49):
down the gutters until it was ankle deep. This city
is a wetland, and there isn't far for water to go,
so it ends up in people's basements. All that ashy,
bony water unning through foundations and drains, a constant trickle
in the background, sort of like the faint pop you
might hear while you're on the phone with a guy
from Montreal wants to talk to your manager. Does it
(13:12):
feel Jordy said, and lit another cigarette. What Jordy I
hate how often he doesn't finish his sentences. Does it
feel like it's happening more? Now? The sort of thing.
I dropped my smoke into the rain water and I shrugged.
Then I said I wish I knew what to tell you,
which wasn't a real answer, and I used my tech
(13:33):
support voice when I said it, because I didn't want
to have that conversation. On my first break after the earthquake,
I smoked and watched the rain and videos on my phone.
Someone live streaming the moment it hit bored talk about
food or weather, than a strange look on their face,
their eyes dart upward. Then the phone falls overhead. Footage
(13:53):
from helicopters of downtown Vancouver, all those green towers swaying
and falling, and the bridge swinging until the cable snap
like rubber bands, the worst in recorded history, worse probably
than the last megathrust in seventeen hundred. I just kept
thinking of that woman and the sort of quiet shock
in her voice her, Oh is that? And then nothing,
(14:17):
and I was standing out in the rain, still warm,
when it occurred to me that I might have heard
her last words. I kept thinking about the texture of
the silence after the call dropped, and what had happened
the moment after that, if that had been the worst
of it, the shock of the whole world rumbling, or
if it had been worse for her after that or
right now or tomorrow. I only had ten minutes because
(14:39):
call volume was increasing. My throat started to tickle in
the world just suddenly out of nowhere, started to look glassy.
The light thick from the ceiling squares, and my skin
prickled when I ran my hands over my arms, which
were covered with goose bumps. The floor was nearly empty
except for Jority running around supervising and not taking calls,
and the cue was packed. My first call was round
way north along the coast Prince Rupe heard a woman
(15:01):
calling about a password reset. I want Mark, she said,
he helped me before. Can I talk to Mark? While
I was documenting, I thought, fuck it, I'm gonna tell
Misty what the old woman told me while we were
waiting for the password reset email about how when you're
that far north, you don't notice time passing, and you
feel good in an unimaginable way in summer, luminous and hopeful,
(15:21):
and how in winter all you want to do is
die and drink yourself into a coma. So you know
it balances out. After that, I reopened three zero. An
elderly woman, I wrote on a phone, trying to print
invoices for locally produced sea salt, looks over at the
rack of glass jars in which she keeps her stock
(15:42):
because she hears a rattle, then another. Then she says, oh,
is that and nothing else, because at that moment, the
force of rashimas lit the Cascadius abduction zone, on which
Vancouver Island rests like a cork in a bottle. Centuries
of continental tension released. I type that, then I hit send.
(16:02):
Then I added a secondary note on her file. At
eight thirty two p s t A nine point eight
hit the Cascadia subduction zone, and Misty was right there
on chad hive, not telling me it was inappropriate. She wrote,
rest their souls, and I was comforted by those temporary words,
which surprised me. My grandparents were on minda now in
(16:23):
the nineteen seventy six earthquake, You got anyone there? No,
I heard the hum from Detroit. It was somehow a
relief to know that across the world, Misty was in
a similar room among people evaluating documentation for apps and
I s p s and accounting software. People saying that
must be frustrating. Let's see if I can help. Something
(16:45):
occurred to me. Do you hear anything about tsunamis no
word so far? Do you have your phones? You can
get the alerts. They'll let us know we're so bad.
I'm taking calls, so I won't be fixing your dog
until tomorrow. I wondered if Kirsty would let us know,
or if she would dither about it until all we
could do was climbed to the top floor of the
building and watch a way consume what was left of
(17:07):
Detroit before it swamped us to five more calls, and
I refilled my water bottle, the one with the slogan
on it fueling small business with the tools to succeed
that some now lost Western Morgan contract brought in. And
I was looking at my skin reflected in the sink,
which was the color of those pale, lumpy smokers. You
see outside the entrance the color of a raw filet
o fish. I felt adrenalized, like a moment before it'd
(17:29):
been terrified, but I could not remember how or why.
I wondered what it was doing to me inside. All
those cells now remade into virus factories, turning to goog
and wash and sloughing off while the virus proliferated through
my system, and I left traces of it on everything
I touched. The water ran over the top of the
bottle clear. So far the ash hasn't worked its way
(17:51):
in through the city's water system, or maybe it has,
and it was invisible like the microplastics in the lake.
So you're gonna judge it, was Jordy. We're gonna do
it next week. I was thinking, we set a time limit,
like five minutes, you and me and Kirsty judge it.
I'll grab a fifty for the Timmy's card too, man,
I said. Georgie just stared at me. You're getting sick.
(18:12):
You know what you need to do. He went on
about ekenesia and flu effects, and I thought about the
tsunami that was or was not traveling across the Pacific,
or just hammer your system with antioxidants to take a
double dose of night quill. Without thinking, I pulled my
phone out of my pocket. You know you can't have
that anywhere on the floor. I was already googling Pacific
tsunami alert, and it was rolling rainbows, and I stared
(18:35):
at it so hard that it seemed to take over
the whole world. And then I shivered. But Jority was
still talking, don't make me write you up. I don't
want to deal with it, okay, I said, It's about
privacy for our users. They need to know that they
can trust our integrity, our word, and our system. The
poster on the far side of the break room said integrity,
word and system. I saw that the alert had been
(18:57):
issued for Japan. That's when he took my phone. You
fucked the dog. I have to write you up. I
don't want to write you up Japan. And six hours,
eight pm I'd still be on. Then, while very far away,
a wave crested on the sea coast, filling the river
basins and the car parks. I know you don't have
(19:20):
to surrender your phone, even if they can require you
to leave it at home. I know they're not supposed
to lock you in either or let you smoke within
three ms of the door, even when the ashes falling.
They're not supposed to pay you in points. You can
then exchange for grocery store gift cards, which you need
because the new minimum wage wasn't even covering rent. But
I needed a job. The next call I got was
(19:42):
farther south, closer to the epicenter. The first thing I
did was asked about the earthquake. Oh, we felt it,
and there's a tsunami warning. But we're far enough inland
it shouldn't be tsunami warning. So when I go try
to log in tsunami, I keep getting the same error.
It says my accounts frozen. What does that mean? I
need to do some invoices And yeah, I just got
the text like half an hour ago. Landfall is like
(20:02):
an hour. The account was frozen due to misspayments. So
I pointed that out and the guy insisted no. He
set up an automated transfer, and he kept me on
the line while he chatted with the banks tech support
on another line to sort out the direct deposit, and
then I reactivated his account. All this time the tsunami
traveling towards the coast or the shallower bottom would raise
the waves height by narrowing its length. Because the last
(20:24):
time I'd been outside, I'd looked at a gift on
Wikipedia that demonstrated how tsunami's crest as they traveled through
shallow waters. The last thing he said wasn't thanks it
was there. It is. The tide's going way out. I
hope everyone's out of downtown. Then he was gone, and
I can imagine it, the water running away from the
shore like a huge exhalation and then collecting into a
(20:44):
rising wave that would destroy them all the tsunami warning
I wrote in chat hive, hoping Misty was there. Kirsty
responded instantly that is not appropriate. Chat hive is for
important work stuff. We haven't heard anything, but we were swamps,
so who knows what's going on outside. Chat Hi channel
will only be used for appropriate business related business. Maybe
you should get out. Chat hi channel will only be
(21:07):
used for appropriate business related business. I've been there for
sixteen hours and I couldn't remember the last time I
slept a full night at home when I hadn't been
buzzed on cold pills in exhaustion and the sound of
call of duty from the living room that week when
I did sleep, I kept saying, this is Mark from Magnicore,
(21:27):
or this is Mark from wherever I am right now,
and heard explosions and the way voices carry over the
river from Detroit, the screams and the crowds and the gunshots.
Or maybe I was never actually asleep, Maybe I was
just off my head. I shouldn't have washed the pills
down with beer. But there's that thing that happens when
you stop in for a beer after work, and the
inertia of the whole thing, the job, the shitty beer,
(21:48):
and the fact that a person brings you food even
if you can't afford it. It sticks you to your seat.
It was bad last summer when we couldn't afford to
run the a C. But the bar on the way
home could, and it was full of familiar guys, broke
and lonely and trying to avoid looking at what was
left of the Detroit skyline, or the gray green clouds
boiling to the north, and the hail and the lightning
storms every afternoon like clockwork. The summers are definitely hotter,
(22:11):
and the mosquitoes are definitely worse. And the last summer
I noticed that the birds don't sing anymore, all their
whistles and like video game lasers. I stepped outside for
another cigarette and realized the door had been locked. And
I don't have a fall because I don't rate a fob.
Jordy was there too, setting up his stupid Western Morgan
idle piles a bright pink and green and blue post it.
(22:33):
Now it's all over his desk. I need to go out.
The doors are locked for the night. I need to
go out. We lost another girl from online. You'll have
to take over social media if we lose anyone else.
Take your break here. I just kind of stared at him,
and my skin prickled, like all the suit of a
phedron I had taken had rushed to the surface and
was blasting every single nerve ending in my body. I
(22:54):
need to go outside. You can't, like you physically can't.
I kind of stood there, and I'm ashamed to say
I wanted to cry, like a little kid who isn't
allowed to use the bathroom, who just wants to sit
with his dad but keeps getting dragged away by unfamiliar relatives.
The kind of crying you see on the bus at
rush hour when some little kid coming back from the
(23:15):
mall loses it and lies in the aisle wailing, cramming
road salt in his mouth, and you just think you
and me both. I didn't actually cry. I hate myself
because I just said, begging, can I please have my
phone back? Please? Jordy looked at me like I was
an idiot him in the middle of all the post
it notes that read congratulations, and You're a winner and
Western Morgan idol. I didn't say anything. I left at first.
(23:40):
I just sat in the lunch room, shivering and nauseated,
staring at the plastic solo cup left over from the
barbecues they used to give before the ash. There will
be worse moments in my life, no doubt, more pain,
more sadness, but I can't imagine anything so wide ranging
in its desolation as that moment. The only thing I
could focus on was telling Missy to get her phone
(24:01):
back and watch the horizon and be ready to escape.
A girl from online staggered through, sweaty and pale, and
I knew that Jordy would be there in a minute
to ask for another eight hours overnight answering stranger's questions
so perfectly that they treat me like a shitty customer
service AI built to serve. There aren't a lot of
(24:21):
choices in life, are there. You can choose to have
kids or not, to leave your hometown or not, or
to stay in a terrible job you are, for some reason,
very good at. But other than that, what is there?
Just a lot of compliance and non compliance. This moment
didn't feel like a choice. I said to the girl,
we need to get out of here, and she nodded.
Then we headed down to the lobby. The doors were
(24:42):
locked and no one caring a key was in the building,
and the girl just looked bad. But when I went
to the fire escape, she still said, no, no, we're
not supposed to. We need to get out. They'll fire us.
And I could hear the fear in her voice, and
I wondered how badly she needed this job, that she
was here in the middle of the night. It's so
sick she could hardly stand. Tell them I did it,
(25:03):
I said, and hit the bar, only it didn't move
because the fire escape was locked too. The next thing
I did was stupid, but I don't know what else
I could have done. I walked back to the lobby
and picked up a garbage can and began slamming it
into the glass door behind me. She was coughing and
coughing and said maybe stop, stop, but so faintly I
could ignore it. Then we were out, and she was
(25:24):
staggering towards the emergency room on wilette and I was
alone in the rain water the same temperature as my blood.
Then I went looking for a pay phone, because the
only way to sort this out was to call in.
But I couldn't remember which of Western Morgan's departments Misty
was assigned to. So when I finally found the city's
last pay phone in the bus depot, I called them all,
(25:44):
all the sad voices of men and women here and
on the other side of the world. Welcome to Kyphus
Business Systems, Jane speaking, Can I help you? Welcome to
Tesla Mobility. Can I help you? Welcome to ross Am
Account Services. Welcome the Lighthouse Mobility. I'm looking for Misty,
(26:04):
she helped me before. I'm sure I can help you.
What's your user number? Misty? Misty knows, I said, my voice,
queer less and elderly. Put on Misty. I could hear
the exhaustion in his silence. Than the compliance one moment,
I'll transfer you. Hey, Misty, I said, Misty, Misty, you
need to get to high ground. What who is this?
(26:26):
Just promise, Kay, there's no tsunami warning. It's on its way.
It's passing Japan and Hawaii. It hit the Allusians California.
I hope she didn't mistake me for what I felt
like right then, a crazy old man mad with loneliness,
longing to hear a voice in the void, even if
it was only to harangue them for the weakness of
their service and the terrible nature of their product. Mark,
(26:50):
another six hours to landfall. I know you'll still be
on shift, promise. I waited for her to disconnect, which
was okay because at least I told her then. I
think maybe she said thank you, Mark, or maybe it
was just the noise in my head. I held the
line another moment that hung up. I felt okay because
I got through, because I wasn't in a cubicle anymore,
(27:12):
because I could walk home and enjoy the silence before
call of duty marathons in the living room, enjoy the
ashy rain falling across my slowly cooking skin. I walked home.
Misty I walked home hoping. Misty said, thank you Mark.
It felt like I was slipping through a gap in
the world between noises, a kind of silent passage, the
(27:36):
way kids slip along the abandoned rail easements in town
below grade, the corridors of grass and rats and squirrels
and birds, between the noise of the phones and call
of duty, between heart beats, between crusting waves, the silence
you hang on to for just a moment when someone
hangs up, before you go on to the next call,
because there is temporarily a respite from the tyranny of
(27:58):
the queue, The silence after a bullet connects or a
wave hits on the other side of the world. I
just hope harder and harder and harder that Misty would
insist they unlock the doors and break the windows, and
they would escape before the wave arrived to wash the
rest of us away. I don't know how to add
(28:26):
a clapping sound effect without it just sounding horrible in
the audio. Airhorns, you know what, Daniel um already straight
seconds of air horns or or or not? Um? I
think the air horns are good. I was beautiful. Yeah,
that was wonderful. It's really incredible, Thank you so much,
(28:47):
and particularly relevant now Yeah yeah, unfortunately, Yeah yeah, it's
with what's happened. Yeah yeah, that is extra extras thinking
about the whole town, what happened in the past week. Yeah, yeah,
that is a it sucks. HM. If people want to
(29:13):
find more of your work, or if there's anything you'd
like to plug, now is the time, okay. UM. I
have a website. It's called where is here dot c
a UM and I have jeez links to a bunch
of my different short stories there. I have a novella
(29:34):
coming out next year. A few years ago I postulationed
a novel UM. But if you're interested in the climate
change stuff, there's probably one I'd recommend called UM an
Important Failure that was in Clark's World. It's available to
read online. It's been translated into Polish. It's in a
couple of different collections. UM. And if I'm allowed to brag,
(29:55):
which it won this the the Sturgeon Award last year,
which is a science fiction award handed out by UM,
an academic organization in the US SO and it's about
it's about climate change. It's all set on Vancouver Island
in Vancouver. I've heard you. I've heard you also have
(30:18):
stories about ghosts. Yes, I have a genre I'm trying
to establish that I call obstetrical horror that I started
writing when I was pregnant. Yeah, giving birth is just
such body horror. So ghosts, childbirth, all that stuff. Yeah,
I read a lot about ghosts as well. You can find,
(30:39):
like I say, a lot of that stuff on my
website and links to anything that's available for free online.
So yeah, where is here? Dot c A and I'm
on Twitter a um at Canadianist, but I don't really
use it that much. So I am excited for the
combination of climate change fiction with horror fiction. Um, And
(30:59):
by excited, it's like half half actually excited, half dreading
because a lot of it's gonna probably be horrible in
terms of people being like, you know, what's scary climate
change and you're like, okay, but yeah, but oh sorry,
go on. I don't know, but I think there definitely
is a good way to combine the the exsential elements
(31:21):
of both of those things to something that actually is
really impactful that plays on human fears and emotions and
how we can get over those fears and move towards
something useful. Yeah. And it's also that horror going back
for well however long you want to we've been telling
stories has given us a series of structures to kind
of process that. UM. And I think that's really valuable,
(31:43):
that their patterns we can use to work through. And
I mean writing climate change fiction for me, I just
finished another novella UM that's specifically about like near future
stuff and about the wildfires a lot um. But you know,
having a story to tell about it as a way
of process sing all the research I was doing UM
was really valued. It's super useful. Yeah, and just um,
(32:06):
I mean, you can call it therapeutic if you want,
But I don't think it's that. I think it's organizing
information in your head that is just simply too large
for you to actually grasp. I mean I can't actually
grasp this stuff. But no you can't. It's it's too bad. Yeah,
exactly exactly trying to me. Yeah, horror does that probably
better than almost any other genre. Yeah, I mean, look
(32:29):
what it horror does with adolescent anxieties or um, you know,
all sorts of different the fear of dying, the fear
of aging, the film if your illness and stuff like that.
So yeah, I think we have structures in place with
horror fiction, um and with sort of science fiction horror
that kind of are gonna let us start to process
things that are otherwise just too intellectual or not intellectual.
(32:52):
But to abstract that's too it's too Yeah, abstractors, I
think is the right term, because I mean, like, guess
my fear of that is that, like climate change fiction
is just gonna resort to like the disaster story and
it has very like glamorized, weird versions of like apocalypses
and disasters and like collapse and very like big ways
(33:15):
that impact everything around you. When in actuality, the effects
that they have are very localized and small and are
still horrifying, but the way that they're framed is always frustrating.
In films, and you look at like, you know, a
typical like you know, like apocalypse themed movie, I think
is I'm afraid that the bigger you know, if you
(33:36):
turn turn talking about like big movies, how it's going
to frame in that way instead of these more kind
of personal stories of like the horror of being trapped
inside a warehouse as a tornado comes and you're not
allowed to leave, which is a way more horrifying than Oh, look,
all of New York City is crumbling because of this pseudami,
which is so big and like possible, I guess, but
(33:59):
like that's so big you can't feel that. And what's
more like gonna happen is people getting trapped in buildings
and not being allowed to leave. And that's that's that's like,
that's actual horner. Yeah, and it's intimate too, write like
it's not it's not in distant idea. It's intimate. It's
the particular consequence of something for a community, for an individual,
for relationships. And if I can go on on this um,
(34:22):
there's an entire genre of apocalyptic fiction that kind of
comes out of the early Cold War, and they're always
these weirdly cozy apocalypse is where one white guy survives
and in the new world he builds this kind of
feudal fantasy. So I've actually this one filled the Last Babylon,
where a character says, of these two spinster ladies that
(34:43):
were miserable before the nuclear war, after the nuclear war,
they're really happy because their lives have meaning now, And
it's this it's those are the apocalyptic stories that we've
had we need a new kind of story, a new
kind of horror that I think, um that does exactly
what you're talking about, that doesn't default to that weird
heroism and one guy surviving kind of thing. There's a
(35:06):
wonderful Corey doctor short story that that I think pivots
off that idea nicely. Um In his his book What
is Unauthorized Toast, I think Bread an authorized Bread is
one of the stories in it, But the book is
has a different it's a collection of his short stories.
(35:26):
But there's um a post apocalyptic story that kind of
follows a bunch of tech bros trying to do the
traditional like survive the the apocalypse makes everything you know
better for me, I get to be a cool warlord thing.
It's it's good. It doesn't end well for them. Um, yeah,
I I think the I think the thing that is
(35:48):
important to do is like focus on the horror of
the little things, like the little things on like a
global scale, Like like the thing that is so frightening
about climate change is that all of these the terrible
things it's bringing are going to hit the same way
mass shootings do, where it is a calamity for a
community and people fifty miles away, try to pretend it
(36:12):
didn't happen and get to doing like their their daily stuff.
Like that's what's that's what's so scary about it. It's
not like you said, it's not the buildings in New
York collapsing from a tidal wave. It's the birds stop
singing and you still have to go to work. I'm
I'm I'm writing a script right now for probably the
show about how climate change is hard to think about
(36:34):
because because how how big it is and one of
like the models that I'm trying to draw a comparison
from this, Like it's almost like climate changes is like
a type is like a type of Cathulhu in terms
of the way it affects you, but you'll probably get
by it's it can affect your neighbors, and you can
watch it and you can watch it have other people,
(36:55):
but like it doesn't mean that your life is going
to end this way because it's so it's so ma
can uncaring, it can attack so many places at once,
but you don't know how like how big this effects
are and how and what what what what the scale
of them will be on your local area. So it's
like this it's this thing that is way more existential
(37:16):
than anything else because it it does not, it does
not care, it has it has no morality. It's it's
not it's not out to get you specifically. It's this weird,
this weird thing that's just getting imposed upon us now.
And that type of horror in fiction, I think is
something that at least I want to explore in my
next few years of writing. And I'm excited to read
(37:36):
other people's work who kind of covered that similar side
of horror and combining with like climate change and the
small ways it's going to start affecting us in places
around the world. I think, um, that what you said
and isn't isn't there so many talks about the Catholic scene.
(37:57):
I don't know. That's Donna Harroway, Donna Harroway, that's it. Yeah, Um,
But but also just how weak some of our previous
narratives like you can't you can't bring in you new
Judeo Christian apocalypse is to this kind of thing because
we can't. There's not you can't. We can't have that
kind of moralizing in it, um that we need. And
(38:19):
that's honestly, Cathulo is really handy for that cosmic horror
because it forces you to, as you say, face something
on an existential level. Um that how you feel and
who you are and your individual experience does not matter.
So it's like a lot of people, like you know us,
we're watching what's happening in Kansas right now, and like
I'm not in Kansas. I don't know anyone in Kansas.
(38:41):
I'm looking at this calamity and it's so distant from me,
but yeah, it's also very close. And that's a weird
feeling to deal with. UM. And I can see oh yeah,
corporations are contributing to this specifically, like climate change as
in general, but like like Amazon trapping people inside inside
these warehouses. It's like, I can there's ways to fight
(39:03):
extensions of this, but you can't fight it. You can
only fight its extensions. And that's and yeah, it's it's
it's a super it's a super interesting thing that I'm
gonna I think, Yeah, we are going to see you know, this,
this idea get dealt with more and more as these
things start happening more and more. Um and yeah, I
(39:25):
mean climate change, cosmic corps maybe maybe the way to go. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's I think that's a good line to
end on, or at least a good thought to end on. Well,
thank you so much, Rebecca for coming on and sharing
your story. Would you mind plugging your website one last
time since we extra like fifteen minutes. No, no, no, no,
(39:49):
that's that's people may not have noted it last time
before the conversation. We should give them another chance. Okay,
So the website it is, where is here? Dot c
A so w h E r I s h E
r E dot c A excellent all right, Well, thank
(40:10):
you very much, Rebecca. Um, until next time, everybody lose
your mind with the cosmic horror something something anything, any
kind of cosmic car that causes you to to your
your mind to scramble and you to begin worshiping in
the dark corners of the world. Any anything that does
(40:30):
that is good. So well, thank you so much for
having me. It's an absolute pleasure, very very happy to
have you with you. It could happen. Here is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can
(40:53):
find sources for It could happen here. Updated monthly at
cool Zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Harrison starts the episode and I don't trust Robert today.
You want me to start? I don't trust Robert today.
It's time, Garrison, it's time for you to learn. Wow,
my advice is a tonal shrieking. I am not doing that.
Everyone's gonna be like, oh, Garrison's just copying Robert's tone
and cadence. You mean you mean they're making sounds with
my mouth. Yeah, that's that's how. That's how, that's how
(00:26):
communication works. Start the episode with that and trigger everybody
like me. You use a microphone, it's very real. Yeah,
you thieve we're recording. Let's let's do this. Hey, it's
time for stories. We love. We love stories here at
(00:47):
Etiquet Happen Here pod the podcast about how things are
kind of falling apart and too maybe some ways to
put them back together. Um, I'm Garrison. I'm starting this
episode today. I'm not sure why roberts here. I'm real hungover.
Robert is real hung because I didn't trust Robert to
do his job today. But I trust you, Garrison. You
didn't really not trust me to do my job. I know.
(01:09):
That's that's that's fun. We also we also have Christopher
here and and we have uh writer Rebecca Campbell. Hello, hey,
and uh, why don't you briefly explain who who you
(01:29):
are and what what's what's going on today? Okay, Well,
I'm a Canadian writer and sometimes I'm a teacher, but
mostly I just write really sad stories about climate change
and ghosts and aies and near future stuff like that. Um.
This story I'm reading is called thank You for Your Patients.
It came out and Reckoning for I guess last year.
(01:51):
And uh, it's based on my partner's time when he
was working in a call center and the kind of
nightmares stories that I heard from them every time he
home from work. But it's also about me being on
the other side of the country from the part of
the world that I love the most, which is the
Pacific Northwest. Um. And you know, watching Fukushima a few
years ago and watching wildfires a few weeks ago, and um,
(02:15):
being separated from the things that are important to you, um,
as they're all falling apart. Well, I'm just excited that
this podcast is now two fifths Canadian, so that's that's
the main thing I'm excited about. Uh. No, oh my god,
I just a tim Horton's cup just appeared next to me.
It's terrible donut home I have I do have a
(02:38):
Tim Hortons cupt in my kitchen. Um, anyway, let's uh,
let's let's let's start this, start this, start this reading,
Let's eat this popsicle stand as they say a thing,
Let's continue, Let's let's eat this. Okay, thank you for
(03:07):
your patience. I'm lucky because they replaced a bunch of
chairs last month and I got a new one. A
good chair is important when you spend ten hours a
day in a cubicle talking to strangers about their problems.
I've been here three years and worked on most of
Western Morgan's services, which means I can, with no thought,
help grandma set up her WiFi, or troubleshoot banking software,
(03:30):
or set up your cell phone plan, or help you
with some app designed to find your soulmate that nevertheless
feels you with hopelessness. I can't help you with the hopelessness.
It's nonstandard, but I'm Western Morgan's floater, and Jordi, your
Kirsty just dropped me. Where the calls are heavy or
turnover as high. On Twitter, I can answer questions within
five seconds of some asshole in Toronto saying, what the
(03:51):
fuck my TV doesn't see the house network, and I respond,
I'm sorry to hear that Toronto asshole. Let's see if
I can help. I'm at possible to rile because I've
heard everything, every possible stupid question, every strange request regarding
lapsed policies and mispayments, every paranoid rand, every sort of
impotent rage. The management is shitty and the customers are irritable,
(04:13):
but there's beauty and problem solving. The really bad stuff
started at the end of last month, when I had
to do on one on one majority team lead for
the floor. I've been fielding a bunch of questions regarding
a recent patch that had broken everything. I had this rhythm,
hitting my thirty second age T and typing without thinking,
Mark here, how can I help you? But one on
(04:36):
one is mandated interruptions, So I listened to Geordy brainstorm
about improving morale. They stopped having barbecues because it was
too expensive, even when the burgers were sawdust and soy. Also,
no one wanted to be outside because Detroit was still burning,
and the PPM up to something like Beijing. Listen to
this Western Morgan idol. Jordy told me we judge three
(04:59):
of the top right calls, and we have a thing
and someone walks away with a Timmy's gift card like
fifty bucks. Jordi said that like it was a good thing.
What about a key fob? I asked, we can't get
out with what without one? After hours? But only management
could hold or the winner gets to wear Janes or
keep their phone for a shift. That didn't write an answer.
(05:20):
The most frustrating thing about Western Morrigan is that team
leads have to hold your phone like you're an untrusted
teenager who's been grounded. I feel like I'm lost in
a cave or a space station. When I do a
lot of overtime. I arrived when it's dark, and I
leave when it's dark. And while sometimes I go around
the corner for coffee or McNuggets, it always feels like
(05:41):
I'm just visiting the world. I don't know what's happened,
if a government's fall on, or if an ice shelf
has collapsed, if Detroit is burning again, or maybe California
or the Great Lakes are dying at a slightly faster
rate than they were before I left for work, never
knowing what's going on outside. I sit in my good
chair and say that sounds frustrating to everyone, no matter
(06:03):
who's talking or what they want. Let me see if
I understand your problem. You could judge, Geordie, Stead said,
still talking about Morrel. You're impartial. You hate everyone. I
don't hate everyone, Georgy, I said reflexively, though, to be fair,
I hate a lot of people here. After my mandated
fifteen minutes with Jordy, I saw that Misty had a
(06:24):
problem with my documentation, which has been rough since they
changed policy on me. She's in the Philippines, where most
of the real work happens. Upper management is all in India.
They only have us because they need Canadian accents on
the phones, and they get tax breaks bringing jobs to
one of the more desolate parts of the country down
when from Detroit, rampant West Nile and of the province's
(06:45):
heavy metals processed at the plant out by the ball
of the baby's born. Here are girls something to do
with residual b p A. Misty is on the other
side of the Pacific in Lagaspi. But you think she
was right here considering how aggressively. She organizes us your
ship at filling out forms. Mark the rite up is
(07:06):
going to kill your rank. We're stack ranked. Every shift
it gets you points you can redeem. You can redeem,
which honestly is worth it for the grocery store gift cards.
Just tell me what I did wrong, Lagaspie. We were
in the middle of a rough month. The flu hit
everywhere at once, and no one could afford to lose
the work, so we had a bunch of people come in,
(07:28):
sick coughs and juicy sneezes all over the floor, and
half the time you got on the elevator and everyone
was gray faced and weaving. I came in over the
weekend to cover Mobile because they lost half their staff,
so I'd been on for eight days by Monday, when
Jordy was manic trying to call people in so he
wouldn't have to go on the phones. He always says,
when we're smoking outside and he's pointedly not looking at
(07:50):
the place where the gam building used to be, It's
not the extra fifty cents an hour, it's the fact
I don't have to deal with people. He hated taking calls.
He offered me overtime so I started coming in at
six and leaving at ten, and I didn't even notice
the weekend. I do remember going home those nights and
thinking how hollow my room felt with my roommates playing
(08:11):
Call of Duty in the living room, and how my
body seemed to vibrate caffeine maybe your pseudophedan. I heard
phantom time warnings and chimes, and when I closed my eyes,
I could see the screen and call after call flooding
the queue. By Saturday, Western Morgan was a haunted house,
but I still wasn't sick. That sounds frustrating. Let me
(08:32):
see if I can help. I was dealing with this
woman on Vancouver Islands who couldn't generate invoices. We'd been
at it for two hours and I could feel her
getting upset when I told her to wipe the whole
system and start again. I could help her with that,
but she was like, no, we'll lose two weeks of work.
There's nothing I can say to that, so we keep
troubleshooting even though it's pointless. Okay, I said, you can
(08:55):
go back to your route invoice and try. Oh, she
said what, And that was it. I didn't hear anything
but the line itself, which just went dead, that kind
of absence you get when someone hangs up on you.
Are you there, ma'am? I called back, but I got
a reorder tone, not voice mail or an old fashioned
busy signal, but the one that means the whole system
(09:16):
is busier, blocked or down. I dropped out of the
queue then, which you're not supposed to do, obviously, and
went looking for Jordy, who was chatting with Kirsty about
Western Morgan idol. I asked if they knew anything, but
of course they didn't. And when I asked if I
could at least grab my phone to see what was happening,
Kirsty did a kind of elementary school teacher sigh. Documentation
(09:37):
for three eight zero your overdue mark. Collar dropped. I
saw that explanation happening across the board. Looks like the
problems at their end. I didn't find out until Moe
came back from Brake Street to wet in the way
you are if you run out into that rain blowing
in from Detroit because you don't want it to touch
(09:57):
your skin, saying earthquake on the West coast, You know
anyone out there? I thought about the woman trying to
get the invoice together for a tiny order of sea
salts from some equally tiny place on Vancouver Island. Her
business so miniscule it's still fit into our cheapest subscription.
In my unsubmitted documentation for Misty, I had written that
(10:18):
her voice sounded like a hopeful but slightly overwhelmed great
aunt trying to make the remote control work. No one,
how bad like nine point six, the worst since forever,
like for hundreds of years, Jesus, I said, Jesus, Jesus,
I've had similar moments on calls. When the shooting happened
in Montreal, not View ma Real, but the one with
(10:40):
the kids ran downtown from McGill and the photographer caught
the girl as the bullet tour at her right kneecap.
I was on the line with this dick wad in
a coworking place on Maisonneuve, who was talking, who was
asking to talk to my supervisor? Then midwine, he stopped
talking like he suddenly didn't care about my attitude. I
could hear his phone pinging, sir, are you there? Can
(11:02):
you hear that it's happening on the street. I can
see a faint popping, voice raised and doors slammed. Then
he cut the call. I kept in the queue. I
helped someone update, I did a subscription renewal. The next person, though,
needed a backup, and that took forever. So we chatted
about hockey until she said, did you hear about Montreal? No, ma'am,
I said, thinking about the sound I may be heard
(11:24):
before his phone cut. Firecrackers, backfires. Some guy shot up
the whole downtown. I think it was terrorists, who knows,
fl Q or Muslims, maybe Red Power fifty dead, but
it was going up every single time ever fresh the page.
She kept going on like this while we did a backup,
and then I made sure everything worked. And it had
been like three hours at that point, and I kept
(11:45):
thinking of the guy in his silence and what was
going on in the streets while we talked about his
log in and how unprofessional I was. I don't have
any friends in Montreal. I went there once to drink
when I was eighteen, but that's it. I just had
that guy and the thump of footsteps fleeing the coworking space.
When I took my break, the rain was falling again,
the faintly gray kind that runs down the sidewalks and
(12:07):
the gutters, and when it builds up enough you can
see it's a little milky because it's full of ash.
If you think too hard about what's running into your
eyes as you stand outside smoking until your pack is empty,
you go eat a twenty four box of tim Bits
or six Big Max, or you stopped for one beer
on the way home, and only leave when they push
you out the door. Geordie was outside. I gave him
(12:29):
a cigarette, even though he doesn't smoke either, and he said,
it doesn't seem to be getting cleaner. Wasn't it supposed
to get cleaner. He grew up in Detroit, though he
was already over here when it burned last year. Maybe
it's safer. The ham is worse. I thought the ham
was supposed to go away. When they sent in the
cleanup cruise. We watched the warm, ash colored water run
(12:49):
down the gutters until it was ankle deep. This city
is a wetland, and there isn't far for water to go,
so it ends up in people's basements. All that ashy,
bony water unning through foundations and drains, a constant trickle
in the background, sort of like the faint pop you
might hear while you're on the phone with a guy
from Montreal wants to talk to your manager. Does it
(13:12):
feel Jordy said, and lit another cigarette. What Jordy I
hate how often he doesn't finish his sentences. Does it
feel like it's happening more? Now? The sort of thing.
I dropped my smoke into the rain water and I shrugged.
Then I said I wish I knew what to tell you,
which wasn't a real answer, and I used my tech
(13:33):
support voice when I said it, because I didn't want
to have that conversation. On my first break after the earthquake,
I smoked and watched the rain and videos on my phone.
Someone live streaming the moment it hit bored talk about
food or weather, than a strange look on their face,
their eyes dart upward. Then the phone falls overhead. Footage
(13:53):
from helicopters of downtown Vancouver, all those green towers swaying
and falling, and the bridge swinging until the cable snap
like rubber bands, the worst in recorded history, worse probably
than the last megathrust in seventeen hundred. I just kept
thinking of that woman and the sort of quiet shock
in her voice her, Oh is that? And then nothing,
(14:17):
and I was standing out in the rain, still warm,
when it occurred to me that I might have heard
her last words. I kept thinking about the texture of
the silence after the call dropped, and what had happened
the moment after that, if that had been the worst
of it, the shock of the whole world rumbling, or
if it had been worse for her after that or
right now or tomorrow. I only had ten minutes because
(14:39):
call volume was increasing. My throat started to tickle in
the world just suddenly out of nowhere, started to look glassy.
The light thick from the ceiling squares, and my skin
prickled when I ran my hands over my arms, which
were covered with goose bumps. The floor was nearly empty
except for Jority running around supervising and not taking calls,
and the cue was packed. My first call was round
way north along the coast Prince Rupe heard a woman
(15:01):
calling about a password reset. I want Mark, she said,
he helped me before. Can I talk to Mark? While
I was documenting, I thought, fuck it, I'm gonna tell
Misty what the old woman told me while we were
waiting for the password reset email about how when you're
that far north, you don't notice time passing, and you
feel good in an unimaginable way in summer, luminous and hopeful,
(15:21):
and how in winter all you want to do is
die and drink yourself into a coma. So you know
it balances out. After that, I reopened three zero. An
elderly woman, I wrote on a phone, trying to print
invoices for locally produced sea salt, looks over at the
rack of glass jars in which she keeps her stock
(15:42):
because she hears a rattle, then another. Then she says, oh,
is that and nothing else, because at that moment, the
force of rashimas lit the Cascadius abduction zone, on which
Vancouver Island rests like a cork in a bottle. Centuries
of continental tension released. I type that, then I hit send.
(16:02):
Then I added a secondary note on her file. At
eight thirty two p s t A nine point eight
hit the Cascadia subduction zone, and Misty was right there
on chad hive, not telling me it was inappropriate. She wrote,
rest their souls, and I was comforted by those temporary words,
which surprised me. My grandparents were on minda now in
(16:23):
the nineteen seventy six earthquake, You got anyone there? No,
I heard the hum from Detroit. It was somehow a
relief to know that across the world, Misty was in
a similar room among people evaluating documentation for apps and
I s p s and accounting software. People saying that
must be frustrating. Let's see if I can help. Something
(16:45):
occurred to me. Do you hear anything about tsunamis no
word so far? Do you have your phones? You can
get the alerts. They'll let us know we're so bad.
I'm taking calls, so I won't be fixing your dog
until tomorrow. I wondered if Kirsty would let us know,
or if she would dither about it until all we
could do was climbed to the top floor of the
building and watch a way consume what was left of
(17:07):
Detroit before it swamped us to five more calls, and
I refilled my water bottle, the one with the slogan
on it fueling small business with the tools to succeed
that some now lost Western Morgan contract brought in. And
I was looking at my skin reflected in the sink,
which was the color of those pale, lumpy smokers. You
see outside the entrance the color of a raw filet
o fish. I felt adrenalized, like a moment before it'd
(17:29):
been terrified, but I could not remember how or why.
I wondered what it was doing to me inside. All
those cells now remade into virus factories, turning to goog
and wash and sloughing off while the virus proliferated through
my system, and I left traces of it on everything
I touched. The water ran over the top of the
bottle clear. So far the ash hasn't worked its way
(17:51):
in through the city's water system, or maybe it has,
and it was invisible like the microplastics in the lake.
So you're gonna judge it, was Jordy. We're gonna do
it next week. I was thinking, we set a time limit,
like five minutes, you and me and Kirsty judge it.
I'll grab a fifty for the Timmy's card too, man,
I said. Georgie just stared at me. You're getting sick.
(18:12):
You know what you need to do. He went on
about ekenesia and flu effects, and I thought about the
tsunami that was or was not traveling across the Pacific,
or just hammer your system with antioxidants to take a
double dose of night quill. Without thinking, I pulled my
phone out of my pocket. You know you can't have
that anywhere on the floor. I was already googling Pacific
tsunami alert, and it was rolling rainbows, and I stared
(18:35):
at it so hard that it seemed to take over
the whole world. And then I shivered. But Jority was
still talking, don't make me write you up. I don't
want to deal with it, okay, I said, It's about
privacy for our users. They need to know that they
can trust our integrity, our word, and our system. The
poster on the far side of the break room said integrity,
word and system. I saw that the alert had been
(18:57):
issued for Japan. That's when he took my phone. You
fucked the dog. I have to write you up. I
don't want to write you up Japan. And six hours,
eight pm I'd still be on. Then, while very far away,
a wave crested on the sea coast, filling the river
basins and the car parks. I know you don't have
(19:20):
to surrender your phone, even if they can require you
to leave it at home. I know they're not supposed
to lock you in either or let you smoke within
three ms of the door, even when the ashes falling.
They're not supposed to pay you in points. You can
then exchange for grocery store gift cards, which you need
because the new minimum wage wasn't even covering rent. But
I needed a job. The next call I got was
(19:42):
farther south, closer to the epicenter. The first thing I
did was asked about the earthquake. Oh, we felt it,
and there's a tsunami warning. But we're far enough inland
it shouldn't be tsunami warning. So when I go try
to log in tsunami, I keep getting the same error.
It says my accounts frozen. What does that mean? I
need to do some invoices And yeah, I just got
the text like half an hour ago. Landfall is like
(20:02):
an hour. The account was frozen due to misspayments. So
I pointed that out and the guy insisted no. He
set up an automated transfer, and he kept me on
the line while he chatted with the banks tech support
on another line to sort out the direct deposit, and
then I reactivated his account. All this time the tsunami
traveling towards the coast or the shallower bottom would raise
the waves height by narrowing its length. Because the last
(20:24):
time I'd been outside, I'd looked at a gift on
Wikipedia that demonstrated how tsunami's crest as they traveled through
shallow waters. The last thing he said wasn't thanks it
was there. It is. The tide's going way out. I
hope everyone's out of downtown. Then he was gone, and
I can imagine it, the water running away from the
shore like a huge exhalation and then collecting into a
(20:44):
rising wave that would destroy them all the tsunami warning
I wrote in chat hive, hoping Misty was there. Kirsty
responded instantly that is not appropriate. Chat hive is for
important work stuff. We haven't heard anything, but we were swamps,
so who knows what's going on outside. Chat Hi channel
will only be used for appropriate business related business. Maybe
you should get out. Chat hi channel will only be
(21:07):
used for appropriate business related business. I've been there for
sixteen hours and I couldn't remember the last time I
slept a full night at home when I hadn't been
buzzed on cold pills in exhaustion and the sound of
call of duty from the living room that week when
I did sleep, I kept saying, this is Mark from Magnicore,
(21:27):
or this is Mark from wherever I am right now,
and heard explosions and the way voices carry over the
river from Detroit, the screams and the crowds and the gunshots.
Or maybe I was never actually asleep, Maybe I was
just off my head. I shouldn't have washed the pills
down with beer. But there's that thing that happens when
you stop in for a beer after work, and the
inertia of the whole thing, the job, the shitty beer,
(21:48):
and the fact that a person brings you food even
if you can't afford it. It sticks you to your seat.
It was bad last summer when we couldn't afford to
run the a C. But the bar on the way
home could, and it was full of familiar guys, broke
and lonely and trying to avoid looking at what was
left of the Detroit skyline, or the gray green clouds
boiling to the north, and the hail and the lightning
storms every afternoon like clockwork. The summers are definitely hotter,
(22:11):
and the mosquitoes are definitely worse. And the last summer
I noticed that the birds don't sing anymore, all their
whistles and like video game lasers. I stepped outside for
another cigarette and realized the door had been locked. And
I don't have a fall because I don't rate a fob.
Jordy was there too, setting up his stupid Western Morgan
idle piles a bright pink and green and blue post it.
(22:33):
Now it's all over his desk. I need to go out.
The doors are locked for the night. I need to
go out. We lost another girl from online. You'll have
to take over social media if we lose anyone else.
Take your break here. I just kind of stared at him,
and my skin prickled, like all the suit of a
phedron I had taken had rushed to the surface and
was blasting every single nerve ending in my body. I
(22:54):
need to go outside. You can't, like you physically can't.
I kind of stood there, and I'm ashamed to say
I wanted to cry, like a little kid who isn't
allowed to use the bathroom, who just wants to sit
with his dad but keeps getting dragged away by unfamiliar relatives.
The kind of crying you see on the bus at
rush hour when some little kid coming back from the
(23:15):
mall loses it and lies in the aisle wailing, cramming
road salt in his mouth, and you just think you
and me both. I didn't actually cry. I hate myself
because I just said, begging, can I please have my
phone back? Please? Jordy looked at me like I was
an idiot him in the middle of all the post
it notes that read congratulations, and You're a winner and
Western Morgan idol. I didn't say anything. I left at first.
(23:40):
I just sat in the lunch room, shivering and nauseated,
staring at the plastic solo cup left over from the
barbecues they used to give before the ash. There will
be worse moments in my life, no doubt, more pain,
more sadness, but I can't imagine anything so wide ranging
in its desolation as that moment. The only thing I
could focus on was telling Missy to get her phone
(24:01):
back and watch the horizon and be ready to escape.
A girl from online staggered through, sweaty and pale, and
I knew that Jordy would be there in a minute
to ask for another eight hours overnight answering stranger's questions
so perfectly that they treat me like a shitty customer
service AI built to serve. There aren't a lot of
(24:21):
choices in life, are there. You can choose to have
kids or not, to leave your hometown or not, or
to stay in a terrible job you are, for some reason,
very good at. But other than that, what is there?
Just a lot of compliance and non compliance. This moment
didn't feel like a choice. I said to the girl,
we need to get out of here, and she nodded.
Then we headed down to the lobby. The doors were
(24:42):
locked and no one caring a key was in the building,
and the girl just looked bad. But when I went
to the fire escape, she still said, no, no, we're
not supposed to. We need to get out. They'll fire us.
And I could hear the fear in her voice, and
I wondered how badly she needed this job, that she
was here in the middle of the night. It's so
sick she could hardly stand. Tell them I did it,
(25:03):
I said, and hit the bar, only it didn't move
because the fire escape was locked too. The next thing
I did was stupid, but I don't know what else
I could have done. I walked back to the lobby
and picked up a garbage can and began slamming it
into the glass door behind me. She was coughing and
coughing and said maybe stop, stop, but so faintly I
could ignore it. Then we were out, and she was
(25:24):
staggering towards the emergency room on wilette and I was
alone in the rain water the same temperature as my blood.
Then I went looking for a pay phone, because the
only way to sort this out was to call in.
But I couldn't remember which of Western Morgan's departments Misty
was assigned to. So when I finally found the city's
last pay phone in the bus depot, I called them all,
(25:44):
all the sad voices of men and women here and
on the other side of the world. Welcome to Kyphus
Business Systems, Jane speaking, Can I help you? Welcome to
Tesla Mobility. Can I help you? Welcome to ross Am
Account Services. Welcome the Lighthouse Mobility. I'm looking for Misty,
(26:04):
she helped me before. I'm sure I can help you.
What's your user number? Misty? Misty knows, I said, my voice,
queer less and elderly. Put on Misty. I could hear
the exhaustion in his silence. Than the compliance one moment,
I'll transfer you. Hey, Misty, I said, Misty, Misty, you
need to get to high ground. What who is this?
(26:26):
Just promise, Kay, there's no tsunami warning. It's on its way.
It's passing Japan and Hawaii. It hit the Allusians California.
I hope she didn't mistake me for what I felt
like right then, a crazy old man mad with loneliness,
longing to hear a voice in the void, even if
it was only to harangue them for the weakness of
their service and the terrible nature of their product. Mark,
(26:50):
another six hours to landfall. I know you'll still be
on shift, promise. I waited for her to disconnect, which
was okay because at least I told her then. I
think maybe she said thank you, Mark, or maybe it
was just the noise in my head. I held the
line another moment that hung up. I felt okay because
I got through, because I wasn't in a cubicle anymore,
(27:12):
because I could walk home and enjoy the silence before
call of duty marathons in the living room, enjoy the
ashy rain falling across my slowly cooking skin. I walked home.
Misty I walked home hoping. Misty said, thank you Mark.
It felt like I was slipping through a gap in
the world between noises, a kind of silent passage, the
(27:36):
way kids slip along the abandoned rail easements in town
below grade, the corridors of grass and rats and squirrels
and birds, between the noise of the phones and call
of duty, between heart beats, between crusting waves, the silence
you hang on to for just a moment when someone
hangs up, before you go on to the next call,
because there is temporarily a respite from the tyranny of
(27:58):
the queue, The silence after a bullet connects or a
wave hits on the other side of the world. I
just hope harder and harder and harder that Misty would
insist they unlock the doors and break the windows, and
they would escape before the wave arrived to wash the
rest of us away. I don't know how to add
(28:26):
a clapping sound effect without it just sounding horrible in
the audio. Airhorns, you know what, Daniel um already straight
seconds of air horns or or or not? Um? I
think the air horns are good. I was beautiful. Yeah,
that was wonderful. It's really incredible, Thank you so much,
(28:47):
and particularly relevant now Yeah yeah, unfortunately, Yeah yeah, it's
with what's happened. Yeah yeah, that is extra extras thinking
about the whole town, what happened in the past week. Yeah, yeah,
that is a it sucks. HM. If people want to
(29:13):
find more of your work, or if there's anything you'd
like to plug, now is the time, okay. UM. I
have a website. It's called where is here dot c
a UM and I have jeez links to a bunch
of my different short stories there. I have a novella
(29:34):
coming out next year. A few years ago I postulationed
a novel UM. But if you're interested in the climate
change stuff, there's probably one I'd recommend called UM an
Important Failure that was in Clark's World. It's available to
read online. It's been translated into Polish. It's in a
couple of different collections. UM. And if I'm allowed to brag,
(29:55):
which it won this the the Sturgeon Award last year,
which is a science fiction award handed out by UM,
an academic organization in the US SO and it's about
it's about climate change. It's all set on Vancouver Island
in Vancouver. I've heard you. I've heard you also have
(30:18):
stories about ghosts. Yes, I have a genre I'm trying
to establish that I call obstetrical horror that I started
writing when I was pregnant. Yeah, giving birth is just
such body horror. So ghosts, childbirth, all that stuff. Yeah,
I read a lot about ghosts as well. You can find,
(30:39):
like I say, a lot of that stuff on my
website and links to anything that's available for free online.
So yeah, where is here? Dot c A and I'm
on Twitter a um at Canadianist, but I don't really
use it that much. So I am excited for the
combination of climate change fiction with horror fiction. Um, And
(30:59):
by excited, it's like half half actually excited, half dreading
because a lot of it's gonna probably be horrible in
terms of people being like, you know, what's scary climate
change and you're like, okay, but yeah, but oh sorry,
go on. I don't know, but I think there definitely
is a good way to combine the the exsential elements
(31:21):
of both of those things to something that actually is
really impactful that plays on human fears and emotions and
how we can get over those fears and move towards
something useful. Yeah. And it's also that horror going back
for well however long you want to we've been telling
stories has given us a series of structures to kind
of process that. UM. And I think that's really valuable,
(31:43):
that their patterns we can use to work through. And
I mean writing climate change fiction for me, I just
finished another novella UM that's specifically about like near future
stuff and about the wildfires a lot um. But you know,
having a story to tell about it as a way
of process sing all the research I was doing UM
was really valued. It's super useful. Yeah, and just um,
(32:06):
I mean, you can call it therapeutic if you want,
But I don't think it's that. I think it's organizing
information in your head that is just simply too large
for you to actually grasp. I mean I can't actually
grasp this stuff. But no you can't. It's it's too bad. Yeah,
exactly exactly trying to me. Yeah, horror does that probably
better than almost any other genre. Yeah, I mean, look
(32:29):
what it horror does with adolescent anxieties or um, you know,
all sorts of different the fear of dying, the fear
of aging, the film if your illness and stuff like that.
So yeah, I think we have structures in place with
horror fiction, um and with sort of science fiction horror
that kind of are gonna let us start to process
things that are otherwise just too intellectual or not intellectual.
(32:52):
But to abstract that's too it's too Yeah, abstractors, I
think is the right term, because I mean, like, guess
my fear of that is that, like climate change fiction
is just gonna resort to like the disaster story and
it has very like glamorized, weird versions of like apocalypses
and disasters and like collapse and very like big ways
(33:15):
that impact everything around you. When in actuality, the effects
that they have are very localized and small and are
still horrifying, but the way that they're framed is always frustrating.
In films, and you look at like, you know, a
typical like you know, like apocalypse themed movie, I think
is I'm afraid that the bigger you know, if you
(33:36):
turn turn talking about like big movies, how it's going
to frame in that way instead of these more kind
of personal stories of like the horror of being trapped
inside a warehouse as a tornado comes and you're not
allowed to leave, which is a way more horrifying than Oh, look,
all of New York City is crumbling because of this pseudami,
which is so big and like possible, I guess, but
(33:59):
like that's so big you can't feel that. And what's
more like gonna happen is people getting trapped in buildings
and not being allowed to leave. And that's that's that's like,
that's actual horner. Yeah, and it's intimate too, write like
it's not it's not in distant idea. It's intimate. It's
the particular consequence of something for a community, for an individual,
for relationships. And if I can go on on this um,
(34:22):
there's an entire genre of apocalyptic fiction that kind of
comes out of the early Cold War, and they're always
these weirdly cozy apocalypse is where one white guy survives
and in the new world he builds this kind of
feudal fantasy. So I've actually this one filled the Last Babylon,
where a character says, of these two spinster ladies that
(34:43):
were miserable before the nuclear war, after the nuclear war,
they're really happy because their lives have meaning now, And
it's this it's those are the apocalyptic stories that we've
had we need a new kind of story, a new
kind of horror that I think, um that does exactly
what you're talking about, that doesn't default to that weird
heroism and one guy surviving kind of thing. There's a
(35:06):
wonderful Corey doctor short story that that I think pivots
off that idea nicely. Um In his his book What
is Unauthorized Toast, I think Bread an authorized Bread is
one of the stories in it, But the book is
has a different it's a collection of his short stories.
(35:26):
But there's um a post apocalyptic story that kind of
follows a bunch of tech bros trying to do the
traditional like survive the the apocalypse makes everything you know
better for me, I get to be a cool warlord thing.
It's it's good. It doesn't end well for them. Um, yeah,
I I think the I think the thing that is
(35:48):
important to do is like focus on the horror of
the little things, like the little things on like a
global scale, Like like the thing that is so frightening
about climate change is that all of these the terrible
things it's bringing are going to hit the same way
mass shootings do, where it is a calamity for a
community and people fifty miles away, try to pretend it
(36:12):
didn't happen and get to doing like their their daily stuff.
Like that's what's that's what's so scary about it. It's
not like you said, it's not the buildings in New
York collapsing from a tidal wave. It's the birds stop
singing and you still have to go to work. I'm
I'm I'm writing a script right now for probably the
show about how climate change is hard to think about
(36:34):
because because how how big it is and one of
like the models that I'm trying to draw a comparison
from this, Like it's almost like climate changes is like
a type is like a type of Cathulhu in terms
of the way it affects you, but you'll probably get
by it's it can affect your neighbors, and you can
watch it and you can watch it have other people,
(36:55):
but like it doesn't mean that your life is going
to end this way because it's so it's so ma
can uncaring, it can attack so many places at once,
but you don't know how like how big this effects
are and how and what what what what the scale
of them will be on your local area. So it's
like this it's this thing that is way more existential
(37:16):
than anything else because it it does not, it does
not care, it has it has no morality. It's it's
not it's not out to get you specifically. It's this weird,
this weird thing that's just getting imposed upon us now.
And that type of horror in fiction, I think is
something that at least I want to explore in my
next few years of writing. And I'm excited to read
(37:36):
other people's work who kind of covered that similar side
of horror and combining with like climate change and the
small ways it's going to start affecting us in places
around the world. I think, um, that what you said
and isn't isn't there so many talks about the Catholic scene.
(37:57):
I don't know. That's Donna Harroway, Donna Harroway, that's it. Yeah, Um,
But but also just how weak some of our previous
narratives like you can't you can't bring in you new
Judeo Christian apocalypse is to this kind of thing because
we can't. There's not you can't. We can't have that
kind of moralizing in it, um that we need. And
(38:19):
that's honestly, Cathulo is really handy for that cosmic horror
because it forces you to, as you say, face something
on an existential level. Um that how you feel and
who you are and your individual experience does not matter.
So it's like a lot of people, like you know us,
we're watching what's happening in Kansas right now, and like
I'm not in Kansas. I don't know anyone in Kansas.
(38:41):
I'm looking at this calamity and it's so distant from me,
but yeah, it's also very close. And that's a weird
feeling to deal with. UM. And I can see oh yeah,
corporations are contributing to this specifically, like climate change as
in general, but like like Amazon trapping people inside inside
these warehouses. It's like, I can there's ways to fight
(39:03):
extensions of this, but you can't fight it. You can
only fight its extensions. And that's and yeah, it's it's
it's a super it's a super interesting thing that I'm
gonna I think, Yeah, we are going to see you know, this,
this idea get dealt with more and more as these
things start happening more and more. Um and yeah, I
(39:25):
mean climate change, cosmic corps maybe maybe the way to go. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's I think that's a good line to
end on, or at least a good thought to end on. Well,
thank you so much, Rebecca for coming on and sharing
your story. Would you mind plugging your website one last
time since we extra like fifteen minutes. No, no, no, no,
(39:49):
that's that's people may not have noted it last time
before the conversation. We should give them another chance. Okay,
So the website it is, where is here? Dot c
A so w h E r I s h E
r E dot c A excellent all right, Well, thank
(40:10):
you very much, Rebecca. Um, until next time, everybody lose
your mind with the cosmic horror something something anything, any
kind of cosmic car that causes you to to your
your mind to scramble and you to begin worshiping in
the dark corners of the world. Any anything that does
(40:30):
that is good. So well, thank you so much for
having me. It's an absolute pleasure, very very happy to
have you with you. It could happen. Here is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can
(40:53):
find sources for It could happen here. Updated monthly at
cool Zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.