The Master Alone

The Broadcast

The camera focuses on a very grumpy looking middle aged man standing in a school office room, a small pile of paper in his hands. Sweat beads from the top of his balding head and slides down his face; the room is hot, the fan blowing just hard enough to mock. He scratches his beard as a rant, one of several he has had in his head today, starts to spew forth in his mind, Why am I having to go through this whole rigmarole? I spent all morning holding a final office hour session, which I am not being paid for, putting the final touches to my grades and they are already submitted into the computer system. The department can easily check it with a few clicks of a mouse button. Why make me stand here and wait for the secretary who, even after working here a decade, still hasn’t figured out the online system, to manually inspect that every grade is in with a paper printout? If I’m not being paid to be here, why make me wait for someone who is paid more than I am to run photocopies and answer a phone to actually do their fucking job?

When the man is honest with himself, he hates just about everything about his job. The low pay, the insults, the unnecessary bureaucracy to justify administrators. The fact that they still keep him on as an adjunct even after working for them for over 2 decades. He is tapping his foot now; the thin carpet muffles the noise a bit, but not completely.

“Mister O’Connor, if you are in that much of a hurry, why don’t I handle your semester checkout,” a nasally voice wheezes out of the department chair office. Ugh. I hate it when he emphasizes Mister. Not everyone had the financial means to afford a doctorate; especially considering the poverty level wages they pay adjuncts here. But I’ll get out of here faster this way.

“Coming.” O’Connor taps a widget on his phone, walks into the office, and hands his pile of paperwork to the weedy man. The camera follows behind and moves to get a good side-shot.

“Well, Mister O’Connor, if you are in such a hurry, you should have submitted your grades sooner.”

“You know I give my students a chance to make any last minute requests the day grades are due, Gregorio.”

“Doctor Gregorio, you mean.”

He ignores the emphasis, thinking two can play the passive-aggressive insult game. O’Connor instead asks, “Can you just confirm that I submitted my grades, Gregorio?”

The weedy man starts to compare the paperwork to the information on his monitor. The man continues the conversation while he works, “I do notice that enrollment is down during the summer. Your 5-8 AM classes may not make. But I’m sure you have something to keep you afloat for the summer.”

“And I am sure that my classes will fill up in the next week, Gregorio, like they always do.”

The weedy man takes a few moments to flip pages and refresh computer screens. “You know, Mister O’Connor, you are never going to get anywhere here.”

O’Connor is aghast at that; Gregorio is a moron and an asshat, but usually plays the academia politics game better than that. O’Connor takes a minute before answering, “I have the highest nursing student graduation rate among the A&P instructors in the department.”

“That’s because,” Gregario snaps, “you actually fail the ones that shouldn’t be nurses. Let the nursing department worry about their graduation rate; we’re supposed to worry about our average final grade scores. That’s why you aren’t going anywhere, Mister O’Connor.”

“Are you done yet?”

“Done. You filled out your paperwork correctly. I do note that, once again, your fail rate is too high.”

“Nobody wants a bad nurse, sir.”

“Not your job.”

O’Connor turns to leave, done with this conversation. The camera turns to face O’Connor, with his boss still sitting at his desk behind him. Gregorio decides to mumble out one more verbal **** before O’Connor grabs the doorknob, just audibly enough to be heard, “Maybe I’d give a flying fuck about your keeping your job here if you hid under my desk and sucked my cock, you try-hard fag.”

O’Connor balls his hands into fists at that one. Helpfully, his hands were hidden by his body. Well, that’s why we record conversations with asshats. Time to go talk to legal.

“See you in two weeks, Gregorio.”

O’Connor opens the door to see the nightmare vortex. The camera quickly zooms around behind the man and shoves, hard, into the man’s knees. He buckles, not expecting that, and tumbles into the void. All is dark.

Francis O’Connor

Francis finds himself awake in a gray void. He feels numb, paralyzed, his head drooping, his body naked. For someone of his age and where he was at 2 years ago, he is in very good physical shape. He’s got decent arm and leg musculature. While his torso has too much fat on it, it is much closer to flat abs than to the flabby paunch he had before hitting the gym so much. His dick is flaccid; while not spectacular, it at least functions. For what good that does for me, he bitterly mulls.

He appears to be sitting on a throne straight out of a Neo Pagan temple, white marble with soft cushions. From what little of the cushions he can see from his frozen position, it looks like someone with a lesbian fetish made a mermaid scene in needlework. A large golden trident rests in a stand to his right. Golden netting drapes over the left armrest under his arm; it digs slightly into his flesh.

Trying to focus more on the problem at hand, Francis scans the rest of the environment from the periphery of his vision. No obvious source of light, yet he can see just fine (once one ignores that he is missing his glasses); subtle gradients of gray hint that he is in some kind of box. Looking as best as he can while unable to move, he notices speakers at the top corners of his box. Those weren’t there before.

Then the music starts. A grating voice exclaims “Welcome to Harem Hotel: Sapphic Seaside Edition! I am your soon to be favorite host, Beckie Petersen, the most powerful, charismatic, and beautiful person ever to climb the heights of the Harem Hotel data analysis department!” No visuals to go with this, just the sound. Francis can do nothing but listen.

And listen is what he does. The experience is strange, to say the least. As far as he can tell, there is some kind of pre-recorded scene, followed by a live mini-interview with the grating voice. In the pre-recorded bits, he can hear some thoughts in addition to the obvious spoken bits. It’s a smidgen hard to parse, given the lack of visual cues. Some bits from the pre-recorded scenes seem to be primarily visual; it’s dead air to him. But he feels it: the helpless anger towards a boss, the equally helpless anger towards academics, the longing for love; the first 3 women contestants are strangers, but he feels like he can relate to their plights; he notes that every contestant is attracted to women. The fourth woman he is at least somewhat acquainted with, at least an online persona, but he can still feel the longing she has for companionship. He starts to tear up at the fifth; considering the “conversation” he just had, it is nice to hear that he mattered to at least one person in his probably now dead career, though it has apparently been so long that he doesn’t remember her; he has been at the job for too long. If he could move, his hands would be in fists as the fifth one spoke; he does not like what he is noticing. He actually does start sobbing a little listening to Josie partially because the closest thing he has to a friend is trapped here, partially because the unintentional rejection stings so much. His heart is broken and he knows it; he just doesn’t have the luxury of mourning it.

Another pre-recorded bit plays. This one is of him? So, I should be expecting that awful screeching voice to be talking to me soon. Calm down, Francis. Think through this very carefully. While I'm fine with suffering whatever tragedy this nightmare wishes to dish out, none of them deserve this.