Flyover City! A Novel (with Superheroes)

13. Training...

The oldest newspaper in Colorado shut its doors a few years ago, a victim of not just the economy, but the long-prophesied death of print media in general, thanks to declining ad-sales and the preponderance of amateur, know-it-all bloggers and social media "content creators" crowding up the Internet (he types without the slightest hint of irony).

What you likely haven't heard about is the death of a much less iconic victim of the same phenomenon: that long-suffering, occasionally updated social networking tool-masquerading-as-journalism known as The Cowtown Online; leaving the editor, assistant editor, marketing manager-slash-sales person, and photo intern to duke it out over that deli position Whole Foods is hiring for. And leaving me without the one barely significant thread of purpose that made me something other than a lowly phone-monkey with delusions of grandeur. Motivation for me to work harder, I guess.

On the bright side, for all those writers and craftsmen who will be paying off school loans for the rest of their lives: Vaig Global Communications is currently hiring 300 additional customer service positions. Mr. Vaig, in his infinite wisdom, has decided that the good people of India are entirely too busy working their way through med school to help roll out his baby, his life's work: the much anticipated Internet connectivity module known as the Hypeport.

I spent this morning stuffed into the second floor conference room alongside the first batch of new hires. When you work on the phone for a living, waiting all day for lunch, for your cigarette break, for the urge to piss - anything that'll get you up and away from your desk - you'd maybe think an afternoon in training (with free pastries and coffee!) would be like an all expense paid trip to the Cayman islands. If you find yourself under that particular delusion, you have clearly never spent four hours in a cramped, poorly ventilated room watching your ex-girlfriend and Team Leader Tim trying to string together a TV, phone, and laptop along a tangled cable.

Upon arrival, we were subjected to bagel-buttering in the near-dark: the lights were dim, so as to not compete with the iconic "Vaig" logo pulsating ominously on the big screen at the front of the room. That sort of visual grandstanding is pretty standard, especially considering all the new employees. But there was clearly more to it than that. The managers seemed unusually stuffy. Reverential, even. They neither looked-at nor spoke-to anyone before the meeting began. The trainer was visibly nervous. Tim didn't crack a single joke.

With Gwen, I didn't notice much of a difference from the last two weeks.

And then he was there. There on the screen, anyway, but it was no less jarring. The vertigo-inducing widow's peak, the intelligent, bored eyes that had appeared below so many newspaper headlines (back when there was such a thing).

"Good morning, everyone." said Alton Vaig, "Welcome to the future."

I am sarcastic. Pessimistic. Too-cool-for-school. I have no use for The Man. But for that one brief instant (literally) I was enraptured.

Then he was gone.

And... then he was back.

Then he just sort of stuttered in and out of existence, the transmission choppy, like the distress call from a thousand old sci-fi movies.

"Shit!" The trainer from corporate whispered. It sounded like a sneeze.

Gwen and Tim snapped to attention, going to work on the screen. After 15 minutes, when it was apparent that the miracle wasn't going to repeat itself, the trainer gave a curt apology, and proceeded to read us Vaig's prepared speech from a hastily received email on his iphone.

The magic was gone. It wasn't just the lines about "I'm here with you today, in real-time, thanks to the fastest, most reliable Internet technology ever created". It was the delivery. I've heard novels worth of corporate speak over the last couple of years. But that was diluted, disseminated down through the ranks. That "Welcome to the Future", so generic, when used to hawk fat-free chicken nuggets and run-free pantyhose? Coming from The Man himself, it was positively chilling.

The morning dragged on. The trainer had gradually come down from his anxiety attack, apparently lulled by his own droning. Who would've thought that the "practical application of Death-Ray technology" could be so dry?

We broke for lunch early when the narrow, sleek Hypeport unit Tim was messing with imploded loudly, a full quarter of its mass swallowed up into itself, tearing a thatch of hair from Tim's wrist with it.

Maybe I'm not a working writer anymore. Maybe I am just a lowly customer service agent. But at least I'm not expected to install that damn thing.