LeafLink (ONC 2024) (Complete)

Chapter 3

At first, after being fired, I'd embraced unemployment with a sardonic touch. The humor helped, as it usually does, but it only worked only for a while. Things changed very quickly. Suddenly, staying in bed every day past eleven wasn't indulgent; my new freedom began to feel pathetic, even embarrassing. I avoided my roommates and my friends, as the success of those around me felt like a personal insult. Of course I knew I wasn't alone, but knowing that there's a national layoff happening isn't much consolation. Misery doesn't love company, especially when said company is competing with you for the last few scraps of employment.

People told me not to worry. "You're not even thirty yet," they'd say, as though that justified failure. "You'll have so much time to figure it out."

But does anyone emerge from their mother's womb and dream of being a copywriter? Do they yearn for the lexicon of corporations to flow through their veins? To pump forth in soliloquies; hymns in service of retail marketing and public relations?

The company I had worked for was called Snacken' Shack, and it was the third-largest chain of convenience stores in New England. My job had been to write up press releases, add copy to product showcases, and write commercial scripts. It was a pale shadow of what I'd set out to do - but hey, it paid the bills.

And it was money that eventually prompted me to sell my soul once again - things were looking bad; I needed to get off my ass and figure something out. I did what any rational person would do: I started begging.

It was my mother who had suggested I speak to Uncle Donny. "Give him a call," she said, after I'd called her after a long day of doing nothing. "He'll get you straightened out."

"Really, Ma? You think so?" I allowed myself to grimace.

"You know what - I'll call him for you, honey!" She said, "he would just love to help you out." Then she ended the call before giving me a chance to protest. Her tone had left me with the nagging sense that she knew how desperate I really was, despite me trying to hide it.

...

Two weeks later, I met Uncle Donny at a local cafe. I had arrived twenty minutes early, and yet I still found him waiting for me, armed with a shiny bald head and a wicked grin. He had taken a table by the window, its wooden surface already littered with the carcasses of empty coffee cups.

"Hey kid," Donny said once I sat down. "Your mother told me you've been having some trouble. How is that psychopath doing, by the way?"

I plaster a smile on my face. "She's doing pretty good, actually."

"Good. That's good." He nods slowly, his attention not on me, but on the view beyond the window. "I should really get out there, sometime - I haven't seen my sister in forever."

"I'm sure she'd like that," I say. Then, "I just want to thank you for taking the time to meet me like this-"

He waves a hand, cutting me off. "We're family, kid. That's what we do."

"Thanks anyway, Donny."

"Yeah, yeah." He pauses to slurp noisily from his latest victim, then sets the cup back down. "So, what - you're a writer? That's what Suzie told me."

"That's right," I say. "My dream was entertainment, but I've been working in corporate for the past few years."

"Entertainment?" He suddenly eyes me with an unexpected intensity, "like, movies and shit?" When I nod, he purses his lips, thoughtful. "Cool, that's real cool."

A pause, then: "hey, have you heard of this new tech they're working on - LeafLink?"

Yeah, I know - imagine how I felt. And they say coincidences don't mean nothin'.