TEAMS
Management Meeting – Shane, Billy, Nile – 9:00
The job is not fully remote, but because no one cares, you are. Most of what you see of yourself is in the box in the corner of your screen. Your eyes are always off kilter, because you’re not looking into the camera; you’re looking at yourself.
Monday Meetings start at 9, but who knows with Shane; the vet’s been keeping him busy. His cat Crumcake: a beauty. Black fur that sucks the light. Though lately, she’s struggled to regrow her gorgeous coat where acne made it drop out. Shane says tomorrow’s board meeting’s the reason for their breakouts. Crumcake is an emotional extension of himself.
You pass your fingers through your hair and watch the ghost version of yourself do the same with a slight delay. You keep going, like you’re in a trance. When you stop, the image of yourself carries on. One second, another, and you watch with intent before the whole screen snuffs to black. Shane appears, sitting in his empty room of glass, which gives Crumcake multiple entry points. His eyes jitter. His hair is a long middle patch swept across one of his balding sides.
Shane points into the camera, behind you. You turn and see primary-coloured smears on a framed A4, hand-painted by Elsie at nursery.
‘Supposed to be a car. She’s only two.’
‘I’d change angle if I were you. Contract signed?’
Looking into Shane’s eyes is being analysed, not seen. If you were a visual of your work, Shane wouldn’t talk to you; he’d scan, connect, download info. Human contact replaced by graphs, metrics: Shane’s dream.
You remember Little Oli. Thick-glassed and fresh out of higher ed. Challenged Shane’s strategic vision of Better Growth Today and was told This is not a democracy. This isn’t even a nation state. It’s a prairie on the 1860s US–Mexico border and you’re an Indian without a horse or bow. Understand?
Oli was dispossessed of his ancestral lands within a month.
‘We need some action–movement, something on that, Nile.’
‘He responded.’
‘Signature?’
‘No.’
Shane raises a pointed finger and opens his mouth to scream but Crumcake hops onto his lap and into view with feline soundlessness, before meowing angrily into camera, her patch of skin flashing red on screen.
Shane inhales deeply. His hair flops before him, cutting between his eyes.
‘Well, Nile, what did he say?’
‘That we were pushy,’ you say. ‘Exact term was: “Way ahead of the curve.”’
‘Leave them a little.’ Shane claps. ‘They’ll reconsider.’
You nod.
Shane intwines his indexes and cradles his nose with them. ‘Billy?’
Billy’s square head melts into his neck. From this angle of the camera, he is a mound of flesh that never stops expanding. Head of Digital and Data Rearing: Billy lines up victims for you. Rumours after Easter claimed that Billy got high on imported Cali Cheese on the Saturday. He ate his three nieces’ eggs, leaving a trail of purple wrappers in the snug. When their screams woke him, he bought their silence with a fifty-pound note each.
He says: ‘Super-strong search opportunities through an ex-colleague. Carlos Carrera. Had a meeting and I dropped our capabilities and he was all-in. Did a calendar check, both had a 15-minute crack on Thursday at 10pm, so we whacked him in. Should see us make a decent move towards our targets,’ he says, smiling at you. ‘Undo this dork’s lack of action.’
‘Is that virtual?’ Shane says.
‘Real as veal,’ Billy says. ‘I deal only face to face, you know that.’
There is a silence.
‘Face to face or get off my case,’ Billy adds.
Shane shakes his head. ‘You two leave me with no choice.’ He claps. ‘We’re cutting the wheat from the chaff. War cupboard time: load and sharpen.’
Kari x Nile Post Weekend Pick-Me-Up 😉 – 10:15
You click the green phone icon. Kari sits smiling and waiting. Her floral-patterned purple curtains shimmy in a breeze. The boyband poster on the wall is tacked at three corners so that one flops, limp as a daisy.
‘Slept bad,’ she says. ‘Wouldn’t believe it. Crazy anxiety right now. So busy.’
Kari is twenty-two and works hard. In the pre-Shane days, the atmosphere not yet on a ventilator, you were in the office and asked Kari to scan and print an ad report. A ten-minute job. After forty five, with your meeting looming, you did a Progress Check and found Kari cross-legged on the carpet, calligraphing digits to three decimal points within tiny, ruler-made spreadsheet boxes. She hadn’t wanted to say the printer was down.
‘Video games or boyfriends?’ you ask.
‘Hey!’ she says. ‘You’re too senior to talk BFs? But yeah, it’s boys.’ She flicks her black hair over her shoulder. ‘And video games.’
‘Young professional doing her thing. All for it.’
‘About that. Shane via HR has put in a mysterious catch-up,’ she says. ‘Is this some pension stuff or…?’
You fire click on mute and camera. Hand over mouth, you breathe, connect things, re-appearing with a blazing smile. ‘Sorry about that. Passing storm. The meeting? Probably for the company life insurance – pays three times your salary to a chosen loved one if you pop your clogs in service! Picked yours?’
‘Erm… no?’
You nod. It would be way too obvious to ask her length of service. But that is the meeting: they’re doing it.
‘If I had to pick,’ she says, still talking, ‘it’d be Dad, obviously, for the life thingy. Still nothing super-serious with the potential BF. I give the rents most my salary anyway.’
There’s a sound. A garish horn once you’ve heard you don’t un-hear: HR are making an announcement.
‘Nice!’ she says. ‘It’s my two-year anniversary, apparently.’
‘Today! Congrats! That’s super!’
‘Please, retract.’ She shakes her finger. ‘In Bulgaria it’s bad luck to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries early. Even a day.’
‘Kari. You’re a great person. Deserve a lot.’
‘Aw, bit creepy,’ she says, ‘but thanks.’
‘Call me with anything. Sure we’ll chat soon.’
We both click off the call, wave-smiling.
Kari is getting sacked.
Quick 2Min – 13:15
Billy’s name pops up on your screen. You think: ignore. But he messages you: Don’t you dare.
You click the green phone icon.
‘Billy…! How’s tricks.’
‘You know about Kari? Dead meat.’
‘Didn’t know. Why?’
‘Simple maths. Numbers. She’s too soft.’
‘Right,’ you say. ‘Think it’s fair?’
‘You know, maybe it should be you. Save little Kari and we’ll chomp you up?’
‘She provides help at home. Her mum’s sick.’
‘She votes Green for fuck’s sake.’
‘How’s that relevant?’
‘If she lawyers up, I’ll know who said.’ Billy leans in with a smile.
You see a framed print in his background, the left side of Billy’s head: a rat holding a love heart. ‘Is that an original?’
Billy turns, looks back round with a horrible grin. ‘Yup.’
‘How much do they pay you?’
‘Enough to buy a Banksy.’
‘Kari’s on eighteen grand.’
‘That’s right,’ he says.
‘Right,’ you say.
You nod slowly, untangling the maths, a memory: someone said he was on three grand a day and you laughed, thinking it impossible.
‘Billy, I’ve got to go.’
Can I gRab you? – 13:25
Kari’s face is white and she has orange bags under her eyes and, although smiling, has streaks of make-up on her cheeks.
‘Looking a bit peaky, Kari. Take the afternoon off?’
If Kari doesn’t turn up, they’d have to do it tomorrow, and tomorrow, at the very least, she’ll get an extra month. If she matches her length of service with a good lawyer, maybe more.
‘Rude!’ she shakes her finger. ‘I don’t really do that? The missing meetings thing?’
‘Listen, erm. There are things I can say. Things I can’t.’
‘OK? You’ve been talking kinda like scrabble all day? Super-random.’
You think: is there any point in saving this oat-milking virtue preacher from getting sacked for yourself? You barely speak the same language. She’s got no kids. If you looked around yourself, in what you assume is the real world, you’d see you’re not exactly flying and it’s Elsie’s third birthday next week and you’ll never again have to see Kari heating up her courgetti if you just shut up.
You change topic, ask whether the meeting with Shane is for a client progress report. How are the metrics on North-Eastern railway’s digital delivery report going? When you’ve gone line-by-line on the client’s campaign, finally, the two of you sit in silence. You wait, say nothing for long enough that Kari’s bored and you can leave.
As you are waving goodbye, an image of Elsie in heart-shaped sunglasses suddenly bubbles up in your mind. You imagine her in this meeting in twenty years’ time, staring at her screen. You say, ‘What’s your notice?’
‘Erm, three months?’
Lots of potential compensation active tomorrow. ‘Maybe don’t go to that meeting.’
‘What?’
‘HR. Shane. Just don’t. I’ll explain tomorrow.’
Kari’s face folds into her hands.
Nile x Shane Monday Check-in – 15:30
Your catch-up with Shane started ten minutes ago. After logging on five late, Shane’s phone bleeped, and he’s been scrolling since. He nods, appreciating whatever is said on the other hand. He raises a finger, in a movement suggesting he could unleash a counterpoint, but drops his finger and nods, straight lipped.
He puts his phone on his desk and turns to you. You feel your heartbeat by your throat.
‘Billy. He’s gone. And Kari. It’ll be me and you.’
You watch your ghost on the screen look side to side. He’s gaunt. He used to smile in innocent twitches, thinking of something funny his friends had said. This ghost’s pupils are punctures in his skull, bovine-like. He’s a scared deer about to be truck-struck.
‘Where are we going with this?’
‘Mate!’ Shane claps. ‘Mate. What did you say?’
‘I need time to… Can it be thought about?’
Shane rakes his hair. ‘Think about what? We’ve won? It’s decided. Billy is freelance and Kari hits her—well, would have hit her two years tomorrow. Buys us six months. After today, you’re on the right side of history. We can say anything about them and it’s truth,’ he says. ‘Get your act together. We’ve stuff to do.’
Shane’s phone bleeps. Crumcake leaps in through the top half of an open window, ears perked.
‘OK. Action time. Board meeting moved to today. Put together a case-study of new agency proposition – aka us. I’ll deal with B and K and we’ll circle back for five pm. Go.’ Clap. ‘Go. Go!’
Board Meeting + Forecasts (new time) – 19:30
You put together old campaign delivery metrics, fudge numbers to buy the new direction time. You consider what it means to work and live, for most of your waking existence, in this screen. Can you remember who you were? Your calves burning on the Cornish hills, batting wildflowers from your path. Proposing to Sara, celebrating so hard you woke to six toppled champagne bottles and splatters on the ceiling. Elsie coming to life as a screaming purple blob. Fatherhood, its instant sense of belonging.
You work. Time passes. You firm a PowerPoint to a PDF. You memorise key stats on yellow index cards.
And then, it is done. All of Kari’s appointments are returned to you cancelled. She’s off the system. You click accept on holidays and dentist appointments, then see unpaid leave you approved: Mum Progress Check: Occupational Therapy. You close your eyes, let breath out your nose, click ‘Cancel’.
The board meeting reminder pops up. You click the link.
Shane is already there, or his office is. Crumcake sits on his desk, licking herself, black fur falling in barber floor clumps. A minute later she’s nude, spotty, shivering.
You notice a framed photo normally illegible behind Shane’s fuzzy-screen effects. Today, it’s clear. It’s younger Shane. A smile not seen in the four years you’ve worked together stretches his face. He’s sat on a mountainside bench, sun-faced and shoulder-hugging a teen girl in a pink hoodie, with the same eyes, same chin, a scarf hiding a bald head. Her skin is light green, wrists thin.
Shane strides onto the screen, swipes Crumcake off the desk and throws her out a low window. He sits, notices his background, re-blurs, slaps own chin and claps hands: ‘Ready?’
The CFOs and CEOs join. At some point, you hear the downstairs door slam and Elsie scream for you. You shut the office door. You watch yourself in the corner of the screen throughout the meeting until the performance is over and the screen turns black. Kari texts you a sad face and a question mark. You archive the chat, block and delete Kari’s number. You check the time, add a mini electric garden Range Rover and a gold daisy-ring neck chain to Elsie’s birthday basket. In the corner of the screen, the ghost is stacking sheets, laughing in his little box. He leans back in his chair, swivels next to the new letters now on screen: MD. He swivels again and keeps spinning.
Dylan Federico Pritchard
Dylan Federico Pritchard is a fiction writer who grew up in Rome but now lives in South East London.
He is currently working on a novella and a collection of short stories. His work has been long listed for the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize 23/24.
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