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Oct 27, 2021 16:39
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| # ¿ Mar 20, 2025 06:29 |
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WE’RE MAKING A CASH OFFER BECAUSE WE CAN 998 words No flash rules *** Padre Vinh was anxious to make the auction but first he needed to touch the land. He turned off the highway and up the switchback to Crystal Point until he found a place to pull over. Here the mountains ran to the sea in violent cuts of chaparral scrubbed raw by the Pacific winds. From once-sleepy surf towns the housing developments had spread like tendrils until the landscape glittered–all except the naked scrub of Crystal Point. Generational fortunes had been made in real estate, and now there was a plum opportunity for the Church. “Prosperity proves providence,” as Blessed Luis always said. Long ago, Vinh’s head newly shaven from initiation. Then-Padre Luis pointing to a map of a coast. Far away in California the first Blessed was seized by divine vision to use his congregation’s collections to acquire the headland known as Crystal Point– “–and from the profits of its sale to the Rankin Company he raised the Church,” Vinh continued aloud. “From then on prosperity abounded, unbroken.” Back then Luis had been a physical force imbued with theological thunder. To Vinh he was prosperity gospel incarnate. Now the old man lacked assurance. He fixated on the minutiae of dollars and cents and risk-adjusted returns, particularly in recent months. Five times he had called during Vinh’s drive: “Crystal Point is an investment and only an investment. Remember that it will be for me to decide whether we move forward. The price must be right. Say it.” Padre Vinh, as always, had swallowed his disappointment at the lack of vision. *** A motel off the coastal freeway, Crystal Point the backdrop, a cheap banner: 121 UNDEVELOPED ACRES – BLIND AUCTION BY BARON KARL. Outside milled a throng of moussed property developers. When his name was called, Vinh entered the appointed room and discovered Karl was shockingly tall, nearly seven feet. “We’re eminently reasonable” was the inauspicious introduction, boomed from above, “and we’re sensitive to your church’s history,” a knowing smile. But as always, the Church’s strategy had been carefully constructed. The Acjachemen Nation’s claim to Crystal Point was not yet public but it had been uncovered by the Church’s portfolio analysts. Vinh had faith the claim was worthless (and he had convinced Luis of the same, at least he hoped), but the developers’ lenders could not possibly risk financing Crystal Point. Unlike the developers, providence meant the Church had the wherewithal to make a cash offer. The pieces came together. God’s hand revealed. As Vinh began to explain Karl’s misfortune he was interrupted by the buzzing of a Razr phone, followed by an agitated minion. Outside, a motorcade stretching to the horizon, chrome twinkling in the California sun. With military precision the vehicles were streaming up to Crystal Point, where there were already rows of parked motorcycles and, ominously, deployed motorhomes. For a moment Vinh thought the Acjachemen were making a move, but then he saw the crimson flag and emblazoned on it the enormous swastika. *** It turned out the Aryan Defenders had learned of the Acjachemen claim and were incensed by the possibility of reparations to native nations. In this Vinh perceived opportunity, divinely-granted. The Aryan occupation of Crystal Point extinguished the developers and with them the auction. Padre Vinh haggled with the broken Karl, but the Church had won. Still, he dreaded Luis’s judgment. The-price-must-be-right. At their last prayer together in Houston, a nervous Vinh: “Surely God himself bankrupted Rankin before it could develop Crystal Point.” “God certainly left Rankin overleveraged” was the dry reply, but Vinh already knew that, and also that God had plagued the bankruptcy proceedings so they dragged on for decades. “And so Rankin proved to be faithless,” Vinh pressed on, “and now God challenges the Church to demonstrate the will to reclaim our birthright. That we have providence.” Blessed Luis remained silent. *** And now on the phone with Luis, Vinh was explaining that the Aryan Defenders were unfortunate but manageable (the Church being majority white), and that Crystal Point still could be refinanced assuming the Acjachemen claim failed as expected. The Church need only finalize the cash offer. Blessed Luis doubted. Adages about risk, economic banalities–skeins that squeezed Vinh’s lungs into a too-familiar pinhead of disappointment. Vinh died, but then his lungs inflated with rage, and his voice erupted with thunder as Luis’s once had, charged with providence. He castigated Luis’s fear. He called on destiny. He invoked profits. And Luis surely must agree that the price was right. Close, very close. But in the world outside, the groans of a teetering financial ecosystem engineered by the reckless and indifferent had reached a crescendo. That morning, the heretofore nascent Great Financial Crisis reached exit velocity in a contagion that would touch every corner of the world. Vinh was unaware, lost in gospel and valuations, even as Luis tried to convey what had happened in the markets. Finally, hoarsely: “As of this afternoon, the Church is no longer liquid.” *** Disbelief, embarrassment. The inability to do a cash offer was a stain on the Church but ultimately no problem. Vinh was sure to find a lender. The Church’s banks said no. So did the Chinese Unity of Southern California. The Pacific Union Church laughed at him. He even went to the Aryan Defenders. “We can’t finance this,” said Aryan Maxx, the cheerful president of a local credit union. “You’re yellow scum. But even if you weren’t, the Acjachemen claim will succeed.” Confused, Vinh gestured at the encampment. “Anyone can tell the land is unquestionably theirs,” laughed Maxx, “but we whites will make them miserable. Besides, no lender will be touching real estate for a long time.” *** Ludicrous excuses, lack of spine, no vision. God’s will obscured. Vinh did not believe that these abstract rumblings of abstract digits in abstract markets could have any true effect on the world. The land was the land. He could feel the soil. In silence Vinh sat at the edge of Crystal Point. Here in the mountains: once hope, now fear.
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Nov 1, 2021 04:26
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Nov 2, 2021 16:41
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edit: all set Captain_Indigo posted:crits Yoruichi posted:crits thanks for these! Mr Gentleman fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 22:34
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VERY SMALL STAKES Words: 1485 The secret of Dorothea’s success was her ergonomic keyboard. Every second counted at WeVizThat Corporation, which measured worker productivity in seconds. Of course her coworkers understood the polite fiction and its implication that Dorothea was simply better than them. Just as in turn Dorothea understood “Still number one after all these years, Ms. Dorothea?” meant “Stop loving us and retire.” Things had soured for the worse after last month’s productivity guillotine. The well-liked Mackie had scored below the cutoff, and for him that meant the dreaded Occupational Reassessment Bureau. Murmurs of “he’s in the bitcoin mines” whenever Dorothea got coffee. The curve for the cutoff, as always, had been set by her high score. It was true that Dorothea was almost two decades past the retirement age of forty. She could leave whenever to transition into citizenship and relaxation, even if she were cut in a productivity guillotine. But as Dorothea gladly told the coworkers whenever they got shirty, she never let anyone bully her and she’d keep going as long as she could keep it up. What she didn’t mention was that with the help of the secret coelocanthic pills, she would never slack. Today the annual replacement cohort had arrived. All young, wary of each other and the WeVizThat vets, but their faces not yet hardened from the guillotines. They’d be fine, thought Dorothea. Inevitably they would bond over hating her. From behind her: “Wilfrid. You deserve our very best. You’ll sit with Ms. Dorothea. She tags volcano data.” Ominous chuckling. “A fellow red-head!” beamed the new recruit, pointing at Dorothea’s head and his own. She kept tapping furiously at her keyboard. Feeling awkward, Wilfrid looked away, his gaze falling on the only thing on Dorothea’s desk: a golden frog figurine the size of a dinner plate. “An African bullfrog! The king of frogs!” He was beaming again. “I’m so glad you don’t have a silly tree frog.” “Clock’s running. You’d better get tagging.” But Dorothea smiled. *** On Dorothea’s screen the pictures came in unbroken waves and as fast as she could she tapped keys to tag them hot, cold, burning, lava domes, cinder cones, a million different things. In the pictures came from somewhere unknown (satellites? data scraping? other people?) and her tags went through the system to another set of people who would do something with them. She had no clue what, or why WeVizThat needed people on keyboards to do this. Nor did she care. All she knew was she was somewhere in the unfathomably long and complex factory line that eventually churned out glorious bars, graphs, charts, arc diagrams, donut charts, dot maps, gantt charts, network diagrams, radial columns, spiral plots, sunbursts, all things and all shapes, that WeVizThat sold to someones somewhere. Tap-tap-tap-tap. With incredible concentration. Seconds mattered, seconds mattered. The others invariably found it tedious but the coelocanthic pills had long ago suppressed that part of Dorothea’s brain. Image, tap, go, repeat, four hours a shift, three shifts a day. *** A few days of tap-tap-tap-tap before Wilfrid ventured, “I wanted to study frogs.” “I did study frogs,” said Dorothea, “in university.” “What happened?” “The budget for frog studiers went from three to two,” pause, “and I was third. It was here or social media review.” “I was five thousandth,” said Wilfrid, “so it was here or the mines.” “Lucky us,” said Dorothea. At their breaks Wilfrid would hang around her. He was the only one. It seemed all he knew about was frogs. For even Dorothea this became wearisome, but a part of her brain told her: be nice to him. Help him. He’s better than no one. *** Three months since Wilfrid started and it was his first productivity guillotine. Dorothea was anxious. She had been giving him tips to speed up but he still seemed slow. It was impossible to tell. At the guillotine ceremony, the WeVizThat banners flapped majestically in the auditorium’s artificial wind. On the overhead screen appeared Dorothea’s score, visualized as a donkey: 5,948,000. No one was quite sure how the scores were calculated. The next high score (shown as the donkey’s leg) was a little over 1,000,000. Groans throughout the room. Cutoff: 500,000. Wilfrid’s score: 505,021. Relief for Wilfrid, and also Dorothea. *** More guillotines came and Wilfrid made the cuts. Always barely. Dorothea was slowing. Just a little, but she’d noticed. Of course that was impossible with the pills. Something held her back from going more quickly. *** One day Dorothea had to renew her voluntary work permit. It was the first shift she’d missed in a while. The clerk at the permit office was new and examined her records suspiciously. “Totally voluntary . . . don’t understand why you aren’t a citizen yet . . . absolutely ridiculous . . . waste of my time . . .” After triple verifying, he sent her off. Back at WeVizThat Dorothea saw Wilfrid chatting with a crowd of coworkers. He waved. She felt a strange ache inside. Afterwards she thought she felt a coolness from him but it was probably nothing. On their next break, he was going on about ancient alien frogs. “What did they say about me?” she asked suddenly. Wilfrid, taken aback: “Nothing.” Dorothea insisted and this went on until he suddenly looked tired. “Why are you still here?” he asked. “You’re killing me. You’re killing everyone.” Shoulders stooped in defeat, his young face anguished. She was taken aback by the transformation. “I’ve realized that I don’t know how I’ll make it to forty doing tap-tap-tap-tap. Twenty more years. I think I’m losing my mind. You could retire tomorrow and be a citizen. Can you imagine that? Instead you’re here setting a ridiculous curve for our cutoffs.” He began to leave. “I won’t be bullied,” she called lamely after him. “I know your last friend was guillotined,” he shouted back. “By your own score.” “She retired–” He was already gone. Unpleasant, but Dorothea supposed she and Wilfrid were friends, which was nice. Friend or not, Wilfrid didn’t speak to her for a month. Dorothea found it amiably awkward, an unfamiliar sensation. *** A week before the next guillotine, she noticed Wilfrid was agitated, typing slowly even for him. On her way to the bathroom, overhearing murmurs in the coffee room: “The cutoffs have been raised. The ghouls at Reassessment need more flesh.” She slapped the back of Wilfrid’s chair. “Start tagging.” A shrug in response. “Now.” “No.” “Why not?” “Let me go to the mines.” “You can catch up.” “Not anymore. Not even if you stopped right now and I tagged faster than ever.” She looked at him for a time, her hands off her keyboard. It was still early before the guillotine, she decided. He had time. The next days were the same. Now a couple days before the guillotine, their last break that night, nearly midnight. In a secluded part of the WeVizThat compound Dorothea carefully showed Wilfrid the coelocanthic pills hidden in the African bullfrog figurine. As she explained it, extremely expensive, extremely rare, very secret, whatever, just listen. “They suppress a part of the brain. You become . . . simpler. The coel- . . . forget it. Nothing magic here. You just get focused. You care less.” All becomes bearable, she thought. “Where’d you get these?” “Someone who didn’t need them gave them to me a long time ago. She told me to pass them on to someone worth it when I was up for retirement. But I was not to waste them.” Dorothea laughed. It seemed so stupid now that she said it aloud. “I think I waited too long. Harder and harder to find anyone worth giving them to. I promised her and I couldn’t break that and now I’ve done it. And you must too. Just don’t wait as long as me.” The obvious question from Wilfrid: “Why me?” The pills in working their miracles over the years had regulated her brain through the myriad cells and functions touched by the coelum until Dorothea had reached a sort of transcendent atavistic state. Blessed simplicity, all excess stripped away. One moment to the next, no anxiety, just tap-tap-tap-tap. It also meant she couldn’t answer properly. “It’s a strange gift,” she replied evasively. No sequence of events pushing her actions and no future ones pulling them. No destiny. She was a cog just as they were both cogs at WeVizThat and the moment had arrived in her coglike advance in time where she was handing the golden bullfrog figurine to Wilfrid. *** At the next productivity guillotine, Dorothea’s score was a little less than usual. The cutoffs, heightened, claimed their victims for the Occupational Reassessment Bureau. With the pills Wilfrid managed to scrape past. Dorothea knew that next time it would be Wilfrid who set the curve. The cogs at WeVizThat turned and turned. As if nothing had happened. In a way, nothing really had. She would file her retirement papers that afternoon, Dorothea decided. For citizenship and frogs.
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Nov 8, 2021 01:33
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Nov 9, 2021 17:03
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| # ¿ Mar 20, 2025 06:29 |
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loved this prompt but the covid booster killed me, will toxx my next entry
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Nov 14, 2021 21:26
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