Agent Orange - Inconsequential

Episode 12 - D'UDE

FROM THE JOURNALS OF AGENT ORANGE:

Imagine how much work it would take to collect all the personal information on everyone in the world. With the current estimate of 6 Billion people, if it took four seconds to type in your full name, that would be 24 billion seconds or approximately 760 years. So in a mere 760 years a single person could enter everyone’s name into a database. Seems inefficient and the poor soul wouldn’t be able to take breaks or eat. If we hired our workaholic friend 99 companions we still end up at 7.6 years and boy are they hungry and tired. Let’s be realistic. A person is probably only going to work one third of their life, 8 hours a day and to keep the math simple let’s say they enjoy overtime, so they work the weekends. At 100 workers that’s about 23 years. At 1000 workers it would take most of a year. At 10,000 workers it would take just over a month.

Okay so we’ve hired our 10,000 data entry specialists and a month later we have all the names entered except by then another 300,000 + babies have been born and that’s only in the US. That will be another 350 hours of work which can be easily absorbed by our small country-sized staff, in a matter of minutes, during which more babies are born but this entry has to end somewhere so we’ll pretend time has stopped.

As we all know a person is not only a name. They have a physical gender and a possibly different gender that they identify with. They have an eye color or colors that doesn’t/don’t change but also heights and weights which do change. They have an age that could have changed since I started typing this sentence. If we consider changing data points static for the moment and add the two genders, eye color, height, weight and age and if each of these takes four seconds to enter. We have just added another 6 months of work for our data entry army. As they happily type and click away, their bank accounts fill with money which will allow them to eat, pay rent, buy toilet paper and possibly, if they eat less and use fewer squares to wipe, save for a trip to Disney World someday.

Beyond physical attributes each person has an almost unlimited amount of data that could be collected about them and each day they live, more data is being compiled. Our 10,000 haven’t a chance at living long enough to capture it all. Could even 100,000?  It’s doubtful considering that those 100,000 would also have to be continually updating information about themselves.

So this is where DUDE, the Department of Unlimited Demographic Exploration comes in. They are working on the premise that the only way to collect everything about everybody is to have people enter their own information. They are hoping to build a website that will encourage people to enter information like their address, where they attended school, what they had for breakfast, the link to their favorite cat video, etc… They also would like to capture people’s thoughts on religion, guns, politics, bacon, and what type of vegetable they would be if they were a vegetable. They realize that there are currently only about 361 million people with access to the internet but they’re assuming that number will grow exponentially.

I don’t see it happening. First of all where would the people find the time to enter all this information, I mean it’s not like they could do it while they were at work, right? If they did, production around the world would be slowed down. The entire advancement of the human race could be stifled. But like I said, it will never happen, people are just too busy.

CHAPTER 9

Orange couldn’t tell what apartment the screaming was coming from so he grabbed his gun and stepped out into the hall. There was silence. He felt naked wearing only his Star Wars pajama bottoms, but someone was in trouble. Fish belly white is what his friends had called him and the addition of sparse orange hairs did little to dismiss the moniker.

Then there was another scream and it seemed to be coming from the apartment next to his. All he knew about the occupant of that apartment was that he was a man named Jack, who was somewhere in his early 30’s. Orange had run into Jack two or three times in passing. The man seemed to be allergic to anything even vaguely related to hygiene and though he was often smiling it was the kind of smile that one found looming over them in nightmares after watching horror movies or consuming bad asparagus. In short, he could have been the poster boy for Pedophiliac’s Anonymous if there was such a thing (was there?).

Orange stepped to the door and listened. He didn’t hear anything. He pounded on the door then realized he had his gun in his hand. He put it behind his back just as the door cracked open. Fifty percent of a leer showed through the slight open space.

“Yea?”

“I heard some screaming?” said Orange.

“This is New York,” said the leerer laughing at his own joke.

“Yes but this sounded like it was coming from your apartment and it sounded like a woman.”

“What, you don’t think I have the occasional pretty thing up to visit me?”

The words “pretty thing” coming from Jack’s lips captured a lasciviousness that made Orange’s jaw tighten. He changed the subject.

“Did you happen to see anyone strange lurking around here yesterday during the day?”

“Stranger than you?” He laughed at himself again but considering Orange’s current state of undress he couldn’t blame the man.

Somewhere inside the apartment glass shattered. Jack looked surprised. “I have to go.”

Orange jammed his foot in the door as it slammed. Unfortunately he forgot he was shoeless. Pain lanced through his body. Jack had turned away but now spun back to see why the door hadn’t shut. There was another crash from inside the apartment.

Orange held his gun toward the partially open door. “Don’t move,” he said as he rocked, trying to balance but not use his injured foot.

Jack growled from the other side of the door. It slammed. Then a second later the door burst out of its frame to bludgeon Orange into the wall behind him. His gun went off, shooting into the floor. He was bruised but his adrenalin kept him moving. He threw what was left of the door off of him to find an empty doorway. 

He heard muffled screaming and rushed into the apartment. In the bedroom a young woman was tied to the bed. She had managed to get a leg free and was kicking violently at Jack as he drew closer with a large knife in his hand.

“Jack!” yelled Orange. “Don’t do this.”

Jack turned to him and roared in anger. As he did his head became that of a translucent tiger, man, hybrid. His hands sprouted long, glowing claws.

Orange shot him twice. As fearsome as he had appeared moments before, the bullets lifted the creature into the air and flung him to the floor.

The woman on the bed began screaming into her gag again, thrashing around violently on the bed.

“Shit.” Orange grabbed a phone that was sitting on top of a nearby dresser and dialed 911. “We need an ambulance at 456 W 45th Street, apartment 306. A man has been shot. The threat has been dealt with.”

The woman on the line started to ask more questions but he hung up.

Jack was bleeding out on the floor but the woman had calmed down. She was wearing cheap lingerie and heavy makeup that was now a horrifying smeared clown mask.

“The police are on their way. Everything will be okay.” He approached slowly and pulled the gag down over her chin.

“He was going to kill me,” she said, sounding like she was in shock.

“Let me try to get these ropes off of you.” The knots must have been tied using some kind of Boy Scout mysticism. Every time he tried to loosen them they became tighter. He picked up the knife that Jack had dropped but when the girl saw it she almost dislocated her wrists trying to get away from him.

“Okay, okay,” he said, putting down the knife. “I’m going to go back into my apartment and put my gun away and get a shirt on so the police don’t shoot me when they get here.”

She started shaking her head as if she didn’t want him to leave.

“Don’t worry I’ll be right next door.”

“What about him?” she asked pointing to the foot of the bed with her head.

“He’s not going anywhere,” said Orange but he really wasn’t one hundred percent sure these astral projectors couldn’t heal themselves. That reminded him. “Did you see anything strange right before I shot him?”

“Stranger than you?” she asked in a disturbing mimicry of Jack’s words minutes earlier.

Orange made a mental note to never leave the house in half his pajama’s again and went back to his apartment.