Flyover City! A Novel (with Superheroes)

1. Fabulous First Issue(s)

Existentialist philosopher, chain-smoker, and all-round party animal Jean Paul Sartre ended his 1944 play "No Exit" with the words "Hell is other people". Now, I don't know whether or not JP ever worked in a call center for a global telecommunications company (his Wikipedia entry doesn't say - har dee. Har har.) but sitting here, tethered to my cubicle by a telephone headset, clicking through the details of his life while Mrs. Marcia Duncomb of Lakewood, Colorado screams in my ear about not being able to find her "stories" among the 682 channels offered with the Vaig Broadband Deluxe Package, I can definitely say I feel a profound, nearly spiritual connection to the guy. Is it bad faith to declare kismet with an existentialist? Sort of like the Dalai Lama announcing to the world that he was reincarnated from a Catholic saint?

"Hello? Are you even listening to me? Honestly, I don't why my Goddamned son ever got me hooked up with all this malarkey..."

"Yes, Mrs. Duncomb. I'm looking over some notes on your account. May I place you on hold for a just a moment?" I ask before tapping the hold button. I'm pretty sure she said yes.

Much better. Man, I need a cigarette. I could head down to the front of the building for a couple of drags, but I already had to pull the "research on your account" card to get a cup of coffee down on four about a half hour ago. (Their brewer doesn't have that weird-ass bleach taste that ours does) I could wait until I'm in after-call, but I'm gonna need that time to work on my next feature for Cowtown Online: a daring expose about the crazy, subversive new trend of donut shops popping up around the metro area. I'm thinking of starting it off with something like –

"Powdered, raised or glazed: for years donuts have been the hottest thing going in coastal cities like New York and L.A, but will those of us in the flabby, stopped-up mid-section of the U.S. get a bite of this trend before it's all played out?"

Of course, the Cowtown doesn't have nearly the gravitas of the Westword, where the restaurant critic can all but vomit in a bakery's tip jar on Tuesday, and the sales people will still have the cajones to walk in on Wednesday to sell the owners a full page ad in the "Café" section.

Now that is power of the press.

My work phone is flashing an insistent, radioactive red. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia - what's it gonna take to get you to hang up? Seriously, all this hold time is really gonna screw with my call stats. That's the last thing I need. As it is, the word among my coworkers - the stretch-pants and stirrups set, as I like to call them - is that Quality Assurance is observing the shit out of our calls this month, grading us on demeanor, willingness to help, and "appropriate and non-excessive use of the hold button". Not that I usually have any problems with QA, so long as I keep myself on the phone. I've actually devised a diabolical algorithm, using liberal utterances of "may I place you on hold?" and "is there anything else I can help you with?" that allows me to meet all the criteria on their "Best Practices" checklist without ever actually addressing what the customer is calling about. I take a certain amount of professional pride in that. It's not easy to manifest that sort of a zero-yield vacuum. It's a beautiful thing: a perfect, Zen-like balance.

Either the Q&A team appreciates the spoken word performance art I deliver on a daily basis, or they just don't receive the bandwidth that I broadcast my sarcasm on. Sleeping with the Q&A team leader probably doesn't hurt either. It's good to have friends in mid-level places.

Flash – flash – flash. A worthy adversary, this one.

Ah, Gwen Carmichael: if I had just the slightest inkling as to which side my bagel was schmeared on, I would be trying my best to keep on your good side for a little while. Last time she had to pull me aside for "coaching" (what? You expect me to not berate a guy who doesn't even check to make sure his cable-box is plugged in?) she full-on kidney punched me when I asked if she wanted to have a quick "human resource issue" in the conference room. And to think, she's such a gas when she's not at work. Or talking about work.

Jeez, will you look at this. There's an article on Facebook that says, while I'm sitting here writing about crullers and providing tech support for television remote controls, that Alton Vaig has succeeded in using the remainder of his once vast fortune to buy back the controlling share of Vaig Communications. Guess he didn't have enough to buy back Vaig Biotech, or Vaig Aerospace, or V Burger, which is unfortunate, because their quality has really gone down lately.

So I'm getting a new boss. Maybe I'll shoot him an email to see if he'll consider reinstating the education reimbursement benefits.

How old is this guy, even? Late thirties? Earlier forties? I'm down to the last of my fortune, and I'm not even sure I'll be able to afford a teriyaki bowl from Taki's when I get off tonight. And I didn't even have to hire a legal team to prove that the two-story mech I was sitting in evolved virtual intelligence on its own, and that the resulting destruction and chaos along 42nd Street in New York occurred despite my most valiant efforts.

Evil genius. That's where the money's at.

Flash – flash – Aaand...GONE!

Screw the donuts. I need a smoke.

POSTED BY Joel Wyatt AT 12.32pm.