GRACE
After I learn about today’s interview subjects, I decide that I’m going to have to take another two lines of ketamine. Today’s “work” requires even more dissociation than normal. Their names, or the names that they give, are Jake and George Cruzz. George and Jake claim to be brothers, but obviously aren’t. George looks to be in his fifties, appears to be somewhere from the Himalayan subcontinent, but maybe he could be Green? Jake is a white passing curly haired American young millenial. Around thirty years old.
Jake and George have just received 15 million dollars in series A funding for their startup, “Cruzzbunch.” from a venture firm that nobody has heard about before called $chmucks Capital. That’s why I’m supposed to meet with them: this is all according to the press release I have just read. According to the description in said press release, George and Jake are “serial” entrepreneurs.
I have about eight minutes before meeting these people. Ten minutes ago. automated managerial bot sent me the press release and a project to-do: “Create Hamburger Talk with Jake and George Cruzzle.” I spent the next seven minutes researching the Cruzz Brothers. What I discovered me inspired me to take that second line. Over the last years, the Cruzz Brothers have lead three sucessful startup “exits” - meaning, they sold their companies to bigger companies. The first was a game studio called Negative Mimetic which produced a single game, “Pest Exterminator Simulator” where the user has to kill all nonhuman life inside of a dwelling, except pets. It was banned in Canada, and sold to Synergy Fusion for 2 million dollars. Their second project continued with the animal cruelty on demand theme. It was called Bud, and allowed users to hire emotional dogs on demand, but only sold emotionally wounded shelter animals. This company sold to Yarvin and D’Annunzio Capital for 3 million. And now this new company? The only available information says that it is the world’s first “postconsensual” media. What does that even mean?
I took my first line this morning on getting to work, and this provided me with enough baseline dissociation to endure my terrible occupational situation, and the general capitalist imperialist dystopia that I live inside, but this will not be enough to endure the pain of having to make hamburgers with the “Cruzz” brothers. I need more.
*snort*
And now as I walk through the hallways of Hamburger News on the way to meet the Cruzz Brothers it all seems almost like a dream to me. Maybe I am not in a dystopia at all. Maybe this is just a dream of a dystopia lived by someone living in a high tech utopia. Yes I am trapped in this job in a company run by white suprematist rapists pretending to be woke in order to sell advertisements that allow a nightmarish global division of labor to continue. But it is all so smooth, isn’t it, it could just be a dream. How could this be real? The people look so stupid and sweaty. Maybe I should have snorted another line of Ketamine. I can start to feel my body again. But there’s not enough time. If I’m even a minute late the door won’t open. Postconsensual might be right.
**
3P-POV.
Grace was still heavily dissociated when she walked into the Hamburger Lab Test kitchen. But she still noticed the friendly vibe. Grace always noticed friendliness because people were not often friendly to grace. In the last few months, ever since the problems had started, it seemed like nobody had been friendly at all. But the Cruzz brothers looked really happy to see her. They looked like Grace was an old friend. And maybe Grace felt that way too, but how could that be possible?
Jake was in the process of chopping up meat on the wooden counter of a hamburger board with a strange looking iron cleaver. He wore an orange smock with a sock puppet on it in front of a striped pink and orange button-up shirt.
“It’s called a Zinh” he explained. “It’s the only cleaver you can use to make Adana kebab. Although what we’re going to be making is not adana, but the adanasmashburger, the child of the Adana Kebab and the Smashburger.”
Grace shook her head, and tried to process the situation again. There, at the counter, cutting meat stood Jake Cruzz. He was a friendly looking Orange with curly hair. And then to his right, was George Cruzz, a man in his sixties wearing a military outfit with many pins on it. Grace tried to place his ethnic background: from the Himalayas? Green? She couldn’t tell. He looked right at her with friendly, open, desire.
Grace was still heavily dissociated when she walked into the Hamburger Lab Test kitchen. But she still noticed the friendly vibe. Grace always noticed friendliness because people were not often friendly to grace. In the last few months, ever since the problems had started, it seemed like nobody had been friendly at all. But the Cruzz brothers looked really happy to see her. They looked like Grace was an old friend. And maybe Grace felt that way too, but how could that be possible?
Jake was in the process of chopping up meat on the wooden counter of a hamburger board with a strange looking iron cleaver. He wore an orange smock with a sock puppet on it in front of a striped pink and orange button-up shirt.
“It’s called a Zinh,” he explained. “It’s the only cleaver you can use to make Adana kebab. Although what we’re going to be making is not Adana, but the Adana smashburger, the child of the Adana Kebab and the smashburger.”
Grace shook her head, and tried to process the situation again. There, at the counter, cutting meat stood Jake Cruzzle. He was a friendly looking Orange with curly hair. And then to his right, was George Cruzzle, a man in his sixties wearing a military outfit with many pins on it. Grace tried to place his ethnic background: from the Himalayas? Green? She couldn’t tell. He looked right at her with friendly, open, desire.
"You're not making a burger?" Grace asked. "I don't prefer to eat the peasant cuisine of the Germanic tribespeople. I've decided instead on a disciplinary fast." Grace nodded slowly. This seemed fictional to her. "You don't have to eat the burger," she offered. "You can just make your signature recipe, or... whatever. I'm pretty sure it'll get more views if you can't cook," she said. "I won't endorse the way halfwit rustics like the Germans eat. I refuse to give assent to the greatest of their crimes," George said. The smile didn't leave his face, and the sense of boundless, unchecked appetites, raw hunger that would drink blood from a cow's carotid like a Masai cowherd made his eyes look hollow and his teeth look sharp.
"All right, well we can get started any time. Get the camera rolling." Grace gave the engage gesture to her cameraman. A make-up artist quickly applied some extra foundation and brushed her nose with a look of disapproval. It did not register to Grace, because in that moment, she was physically blind and seeing purely through her mind's eye. She saw black vortexes circling around the two brothers. The camera operator shouted. She was vaguely aware of a slight weight--a wireless microphone, concealed by a large apron with a strange pink ground meat pattern. It made her feel morbid, but she was taking medicine against such things as feeling.
Grace strode robotically toward the kitchen counter. George was standing off to the side, to make it intentionally difficult to keep all three in frame. In front of Grace were ingredients, ingredients she knew how to assemble but was struggling to understand their purpose. She'd known beforehand what she had to do, but George's grin,
"Hello, and welcome to Hamburger Club News Hamburger Minute Hamburger Time Startup Watchburger. Today I'm going to be making a real burger using this pink slop and these odd colorful shapes. My name is Grace Park, and with me today are George and Jake Cruzzle, founders of CruzzBunch Inc, the first post-consent media vertical ever created. Now, tell me, how is your media vertical not an elaborate rape scheme, because that's what it fucking sounds like!
Jake and George both nodded sagely. "Well, we're experimenting with a lot of different ideas right now. Sustainability is the biggest one, yes sustainability," said Jake.
As he finished, in harmony, George started. "Yes, sustainability. Right now our biggest problem is content acquisition burnout. We're working on a new system of automation, the automatist automation, and we're trying," said George. Again, the strange harmony started up again. Was this an act? "We're trying to sustain the very essence of information--which is prayer. We're all praying, every day we open up Twitter, we're praying," said Jake. "We're praying it's not lying to us. Praying it's real. Praying it's going to stay real. And we thought, you know, this is the underpinning of a radical set of consensual principles," said George.
"What the hell are you two talking about?" asked Grace.
"I'm glad you asked. Today I'm making an Adana Smash burger. It's lamb, basically, enriched with tail fat. It's a very specific idea for a kebab, but once I have it minced and ready to be formed, I will just kind of, smash it into a burger shape. I'll eat it after that. I've brought along a fantastic, easy drinking Tannat from Uruguay, which has underrated wine country. I think once we've shared this wine, we will talk freely about our particular troubles with the media market," said Jake.
"We'll see, you know we're only scheduled for a half hour."
"Sorry, George usually handles all the 'press' junkets and such."
"And I won't have my brother constrained by the whimsy of 'media professionals' in a midwestern obelisk. We'll cook and eat at our own pace."
"You told me you weren't eating."
"And I won't, but drinking is not eating," George said. George sharpened Jake's Zinh, pushing it at about a 15 degree angle up the whetstone, then reversing the edge and pulling it back down, then again on a finer grain. The rhythmic motion engaged Grace's attention.
Grace kept looking at the knife against the stone.
"You're a little off today, Grace. We'd heard you guys like to party, but this is a little excessive," Jake said.
GRACE
I realize I’ve been looking at the knife getting sharpened. The Zinh, that’s what Cruz called it for way too long, but it’s hard to take my attention away. Knife on the whetstone, sharper and sharper. What happens when a knife gets sharper? All the edge gets taken off the.
Jake says “You’re a little off today Grace” and my focus returned. Ketamine does this, I remind myself, it makes things uneven, makes my attention weird. It’s the cost of the dissociation. But I’m under control. I can make this work. What am I doing here. I’m trying to interview them about CruzzBunch. But what is CruzzBunch
There’s only one way to tell. I ask them: “Ok, whew, yeah, to be honest, I’m doing a lot of prescription ketamine right now, it’s for, dystopian personality disorder, and, yea. Right. So: what exactly is Cruzzbunch.”
George and Jake look at each other. It seems like they are about to do that creepy synchronization.
“Could you not do the synchronization thing.” I say.
“Actually, yes. We were just about to desyncronize” says Jake. He’s still sharpening the knife. “Because we relate to Cruzzbunch in a very different way.
“I get the idea from God” says George.
“And then I work out the process.”
And then they don’t say anything. Jake keeps sharpening the knife against the whetstone.
“So what’s the vision?”
“I saw a room with smartglass walls showing a constant feed of global news to a squad of hypnotized reporters with subdural—“
“George, we’re not going to talk about the subdurals yet.”
“That’s true. I did agree not to talk about the subdurals yet. So no subdurals. What matters is this vision: this room of journalists looking at video walls and producing surrealist news.”
“When I heard George say surrealist news, that’s when the process came. First, a circuit of reality substrate leading to truth synthesis leading to journalist digest leading to trust leading to voluntary consumption leading to behavior, and then a way to short this circuit.”
“I have not done enough drugs to understand what you are saying.” Jake smiled, and I had a powerful intuition that he had a sexual fantasy of masturbating while George fucked people in the same room.
“Let’s take this more slowly. We’re going to begin with the mainstream Western media circuit. The axiomatically linked set of assumptions that everyone, New York Times, Fox News, Hamburger News, Buzzfeed, The Guardian, all western media. They are all based on the idea that reality is truth, that the consumer benefits from truth, and that consumers go buy truth in the marketplace of ideas, and this is what media sells, knowledge that is economically equivalent to experience, superior to imagination and dream. This is consensual media.”
“What’s the consent?” I ask.
“The consent is this: media offers valuable information because it is true, I consent to media because I want truth.”
I think about it. This makes some sense. Media sells a vision of the world, truth.
“But this basic offering, this “truth” is also a great fetter on productivity. Even fake news has to look true, and making this truth effect is time and resource consuming. Here is the essential operating advantage of postconsensual media: it doesn’t even have to pretend to be true”
“If you've seen The Naked Gun, you learned almost everything you'd want to know about policing in America. If you see a surrealist bend on a topic, and you're receptive to it and it is made to be received, you're in luck, you are getting highly compressed information and the algorithm to unpack it.” said George, and then winked at me. I winked back at him, almost without knowing why I did it. Now the idea for Cruzzbunch was somewhat clearer.
“So you’re hiring journalists to sit inside a room with videos on the walls, pumping some legal version of LSD into their veins, and getting them to write made believe stories.”
“Do you want to be the new CEO” said George. He must be joking, but it didn’t seem that he was joking. Better to get away with the question with a question.
“Where are operations now?” I ask.
George shrugs. “Jake does operations layer.
“Still doing closed beta tests seeing if they can do a continuous production run how many shift change. Need staff numbers since the model is extremely taxing. Big burnout rate.” Jake says.
Why would anyone want to fund this?
“Who is $chmucks Capital” I ask.
“Schmucks what?” George says.
“They funded you.” I say.
“The principle is Luke Lukas. Associated with Sandycrotch, if you remember.”
I have no idea what any of these words mean, and suddenly start to believe that this is one large reality television stunt that I’m caught in. There are cameras and makeup. How do I know that these Cruzz brothers are real? Only eight minutes of internet research. But I looked at Wikipedia, hard to scam that. Maybe they made a clone Wikpedia, sent me to that. I look around the room. They look at me. If it’s a reality show, I have to go along with it. I’m not going to act crazy. Just keep playing my role.
“I’m not familiar with any of those names. So why would anyone give you fifteen million dollars”
“Euros, actually” said George.
“We’re launching in Ireland.”
“Fifteen million euros to pay journalists to write fake news.”
“Surreal news” says Jake
“Postreal news” says George, “Klings gut.”
“Let’s stick to Surreal news. Consistency. And Grace, to answer your question, if you want to know why we’re getting funded, look at these numbers.”
“Let’s stick to Surreal news. Consistency. And Grace, to answer your question, if you want to know why we’re getting funded, look at these numbers,” Jake said.
Jake gestured at his phone, which had a deck on it. I looked at the deck. It was just a string of binary.
"It spells out, in English, that the public does not care about what the news says, as long as it does not directly contradict what they're looking at currently. Over 70% of medical studies that get reported are completely bogus. Journalists have no training or facility with numbers, with videography, with software development, business, finance, the modern world really. They can operate a MacBook once someone in IT or the Genius Bar installs Word on it."
"Why did you put this in binary?" I asked.
"It's a basic sort of encryption. Our last few decks were poached, and we're narrowing down our list of suspects," said George. "It's hard to read and boring to solve, so it's a good deterrent against the casual thief. Though I suppose our potential thieves are very persistent."
"It's more like one suspect," said Jake.
"I think she must have a partner," said George.
"Ah, this debate again."
"Wait, is someone after your decks? Is there some sort of weird espionage against your plan to drug a bunch of writers in Ireland and sell whatever they write?" I asked.
"Should we tell her about Marlene?" Jake asked.
"We have a Nemesis." George said, flatly. "We have carefully cultivated a Nemesis. It's important to choose your enemies as much as you choose your friends. We think we've chosen well."
I shook my head. I looked down, and I was forming a patty. I remembered finally what the burger would be. Tomme de Savoie cheese stuffed in a Portobello mushroom, battered and deep fried, then topping a venison burger with caramelized onions, rocket, and grilled peach slices. It would be topped with stone ground mustard and gochujang sauce. The bun was a challah bun. Who came up with this recipe? Is this the Cruzzbunch burger?
"So... you have a Nemesis?" I asked.
"So, back in our... earlier days, we realized, well, we needed a brand. Violence seemed like a good one. People respond to it, they cannot contain it, and they have to use it to even try and fight it. I'd had a great idea of us coming out on top in a battle of steel and strength against Bill Gates' most trusted enforcers, against Paul Graham, against Bezos with his gorilla steroids. Silicon Valley lacks martial virtue. And the right of conquest is the most powerful right of any king, and what is a business if not a kingdom?" George was grilling the peaches now. Did he know the recipe? Or was this an intuitive decision?
What was this macho bullshit he was spouting? "A business is a complex system connecting the talents of professionals to a mission and a task, it's a way to organize people to accomplish tremendous things."
"I used to think that way too, Grace. But it's really not too far off, what you're saying and what George is saying. It's two different languages, saying the same thing."
"When we did the Bud idea, we got it from some dumb idiot who'd worked for us before, I forget doing what. But I saw her potential when she was pitching her idea for a company that let us service the emotionally distressed on demand. I thought, there's no faster growing market than pain. What was the statistic, Jake?"
"80% of people are in agonizing solitude for at least 2 hours a day, and 90% of them would, at that moment, spend any amount of money to feel loved again," Jake said.
"Is that true?"
"I hope so! That's a great market, desperate, in agony, subjective desolation--it's everything you could ever hope for in a target audience. Pain = money, Grace, there's nothing people want to get rid of more than pain, and nothing people confuse with pleasure quite as much as the absence of pain," George said.
"We stole her idea, and it was pretty good. At first. But I badly underestimated the actual needs of the minimum viable product, and we went live too fast. I thought, partnership with a respected shelter, get some chilled out dogs, and do overnight delivery," Jake said.
"Well it turns out FedEx is not delicate with boxes with a dog inside, even if you mark FRAGILE on them. A lot of people got a lot of dead animals in the mail," George said. He almost sounded regretful.
I was happy I'd taken enough k to not think about that seriously. My mind was treating concepts with ambivalence and a blessed distance right now. "How can you live with yourself after doing that?" I asked.
"Your hand is full of mutilated deer flesh, I don't know how you live with yourself, Grace."
I looked down at my hands, they didn't seem too bloody. George picked the meat right out of my hand and threw it on the grill. I went to wash my hands and started listening intently as the water ran over my hands and washed the chunks of flesh off. I couldn't tell what temperature the water was.
"Well, our Nemesis was born, as George likes to say, the day we crushed her dream and got the Canadian parliament to outlaw businesses like ours. Animal rights activists torched the whole building we were in! I think she worked with us on the next project though. Not sure why. Did you hire her on purpose?" Jake asked.
"We concealed ourselves from her! We had only started her on her journey." George said.
"Well, the next one was a fun idea. We'd heard about this NFT thing, and realized, we could get people to kill each other for these damn things. So we partnered up with some AR glasses manufacturer, got them to foot the bill at first, and we started up our idea for an AR assassin game. We wanted to train everyone in the provinces and territories to kill others for in-game rewards," Jake said.
"Like, Squid Games meets Pikachu Go," George said.
"You were actually encouraging people to kill each other?"
"No, no, just virtually. But the AR meant you'd have to get good at it in real life, see yourself stabbing someone. Very powerful experience, to stab someone," George said.
"How did it end?" I asked. "I mean, you're here, with your surreal news idea."
"Uh, we got acquired, but only after the whole... incident," Jake said.
"Someone, probably Marlene, drugged the water supply with a lot of PCP," George said.
"We'd been working on a system where people could get weed laced with PCP delivered to their doorstep, anonymously. We were considering other additives, but we figured we'd stick to the classics," said Jake.
"Wait, what, PCP? That's..."
"A very popular recreational drug that is well loved by many Canadians. Tolerated poorly though. A lot of people stabbed each other. But, we saw her face that day. It was not pretty," George said.
"See, how we recognized her though. To do something like that, because we ruined her idea of helping people who liked animals? That's Nemesis. She would be following us, everywhere. Constantly putting everyone around us, in any situation we might find ourselves in, in extreme danger. There was nothing she couldn't accomplish, we thought."
"But, we must have obstacles in life, so we can know the strain of effort and the pride of accomplishment and victory. We have to create a force that's within our world to find some real, worthy test. Making money is one thing, finding an enemy is another," George said.
"You don't need to worry though, I think. Besides, you must have enemies, right? Who are your enemies, Grace?" Jake asked.
As Grace thought about the answer, the first alarm went off.