Things had been getting strange at the firm, since the boss had come back from holidays. The black cape and the pile of Crowley books strewn about the office were the first clue. What was Hardeep, the Singaporean tech bro CEO, doing with all this, mused Pierre, a level 7 sales executive, en route to that much aspired L8, and the wealth and status that that executive level bequeathed. Pre-promo, it was essential for Pierre to have his political senses finely honed.
Doing his job well wasn’t enough, at those levels Pierre had to live and breathe the company’s culture and values. These had been set by Hardeep the founder wiz kid, the ideator of everything the company had done from inception to IPO to sector domination, so these latest rumours were worrying. Up until now Hardeep had been a straight shooter, a vanilla tech founder with a classic trajectory. Born to rich parents, both in finance, undergrad in CompSci at MIT, intern then employee at Google straight out of college, a brief stint as an MBA student at Princeton, only to fashionably drop out just prior to starting the company and almost magically obtaining record series A funding from SoftBank. He was born to rule, and it was widely known that it was his father’s connections that had brokered the SoftBank meeting, but in most speeches he liked to simply refer to himself as a “college dropout” as it gave him better founder cred.
To be fair though, he was extremely competent, what he had achieved was no small feat. He’d made them all comfortably wealthy, even if Pierre and his Ecole upbringing did cringe a bit at the corporate aesthetics and culture, or lack of anything that could be considered culture from his perspective, beyond LinkedIn-inspired hustle and Hardeep’s upper–front–of–class energy. You succeeded in the company, the memo went, got wealthy and got promoted by showing up, being positive and not giving up. And at Pierre’s ”upper middle management en route to executive” level, the much aspired levels 8 and above, success meant corporate retreats, a camaraderie with the rest of management that verged on the culty, and a fuck tonne of leaning in.
So Hardeep’s new behaviour was as confusing as it was worrying. What cringeworthy new cultural appropriations would they be subjected to now? Please no more Native American metaphors for sales, Pierre thought. Or Hawaiian words for camaraderie. But what’s with the eyeliner and the black capes? Or the 19th century Golden Dawn ceremonial magic aesthetic in several of the major boardrooms that had replaced the Google-style primary colour furnishings which somehow reminded software engineers of their youths or of college, but that Pierre secretly referred to as “neutered toddlercore”.
Pierre just wanted to make money and retire early, buy back his family’s vineyards in the south of France, and escape all this cringe. He’d been faking it for so long, pretending he cared about any of this beyond his lightly-taxed sales commission and his stock vests. He was amazed he hadn’t been read yet by one of his colleagues, but they were too busy drinking the kool aid and so aggressively normal and well-adjusted that to them he was just a likeable enough colleague with a funny European accent whose main remarkable trait was his tailored suits and complete aversion to anything as tacky as LVHM luxury brands.
Pierre’s corporate iPhone buzzed, and a new company-wide memo from the CEO appeared on the screen, with a subject line that began:” NEW CORPORATE RESPECT: placating the Dead God at the End of Time.”
What continued on from that memo could best be described as a stream of consciousness ramble about angry bearded men in black leather and the dark chaos that is the substrate of the world of appearances, and the Dead God which lives beneath the chaos at the end of time. Pierre did a fair bit of skimming at this point, and the gist of it was that despite this revelation of the chaos underlying all being sales targets still needed to be met, not only to please investors and Hardeep but also to placate the dead god and keep the chaos at bay. Also, Thelemic mass was mandatory for all level 7 and above?
Ayahuasca, Pierre thought, it had to be Ayahuasca. Doing “shaman” guided sessions had been a bit of a Silicon Valley craze, and Hardeep followed Silicon Valley crazes religiously. But usually executives came back from these sessions spouting West Coast new age cliches that hadn’t changed much since the 60s and translated seamlessly into corporate mission statements: appropriated Comanche war phrases about conquering markets, being inanely positive, or some new faux humility pose.
This was something else, something he hadn’t encountered since his experimental university days when he’d adopted a goth aesthetic to get into a girl’s black spandex, wearing ripped T-shirts about “doing what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” and feigning an interest in the occult books of fin de siecle aristocrats with far too much time on their hands.
Pierre’s goth phase ended abruptly when he fell for a rich heiress in the art scene who thought being a goth was tacky. He’d fallen for her completely and she had made it clear he would never be taken seriously unless he was rich. This was also around the time that his father had frittered away the family business to a coke and gambling habit, and he’d had the rude awakening that he’d never come into money easily. This identity crisis only made the heartbreak hurt more, and Paris morphed from the carefree playground of his student days into a painful reminder of what he’d lost. He had to get as far away from it all as he could, and an MBA in Singapore seemed like the complete opposite of everything he knew.
This is how he found himself in a costume shop in Tanjong Pagar, fifteen years later, renting a black cape for the new mandatory dark mass that had been declared by the CEO. The stream of consciousness memo had been followed up by a helpful email from HR setting out the dress code and venue location for it, which turned out to be a corporate retreat in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Pierre arrived at the venue for this dark QBR or end of quarter business review, and was welcomed by black silk sheets covering the entrance and the walls of the venue. So far, so goth. What surprised him were the officiating celebrants of the dark mass, four leather daddies and a…Russian orthodox priest?
These incompatible figures confirmed rumours he’d been hearing amongst his peers, that slowly began to trace the genesis of Hardeep’s latest weird turn.
“Yeah, so I heard from Susan, his PA, that Hardeep had taken a holiday to Berlin, had booked a penthouse at the Ritz, then had gotten a bit frisky and got his Berlin fixer to organise a couple pro dommes”, said Archer, his colleague and peer in that corporate hierarchy that Singaporeans loved so much.
“Ahh that would explain the leather daddies”, replied Pierre, trying to put on his most affected Parisian tone but feeling completely ridiculous in that mandatory cape. It’s incredibly hard to do French irony sporting an HR-mandated oiled chest, black eye liner and tight black speedos.
“I use the same fixer in Berlin”, Archer seemed completely at home in his matching outfit, but the British have sado-masochism woven into their culture, thought Pierre. He’s probably reminiscing about his public schoolboy days and hopes there’ll be public physical punishment..”I can explain the orthodox priest”
“Do tell!”
“The priest was meant to bless a Russian Oligarch’s suite in the same hotel. He gets the room wrong and pounds on Hardeep’s suite in full official regalia and a smoking thurible. Hardeep is right in the middle of a scene with his new friends, and stumbles over to open the door, naked. He grew extremely distraught at the sight of the priest, beginning to shriek about dark princes and dead gods and chaos..”
“So, he saw an orthodox priest and possibly mistook him for something more sinister?”
“Looks like that yes”
As they entered the room, decked in skulls and red candles and naked dancers, the priest chanted babble in Russian and every now and again muttered the words “dead god” and “chaos”. Pierre felt like an extra in Eyes Wide Shut.
“So, the priest is playing along with all this?” Pierre whispers to Archer.
“Looks like it, with enough money you can get a priest to do about anything these days, especially the Russian orthodox ones”, says Archer with a wink.
Archer is loving this, that depraved Pom, thinks Pierre. At this next promotion cycle only one of us is getting to L8. I need to be game here, I need to show Hardeep that I am worthy, that I understand the lessons he’s trying to teach us.
At this point, Hardeep arrives, also sporting a bare oiled chest but wearing red instead of black speedos, a red cape and red horns, as a not so subtle reminder of who was top dog. The priest chants louder now, the models dance and gyrate more theatrically, the leather daddies hide their boredom better and crack their whips loudly. Hardeep raises his hand and the chanting stops.
“Brothers and sisters in Darkness, thank you for joining me in this dark communion. I had an epiphany in Berlin. The company will change. In the face of cosmic indifference our technocratic meritocracy is not just misguided, it is laughable. We will therefore transition from a technological-meritocratic regime to one of cosmic fatalism. The only eternal invariant for the dead god at the end of time is capital. So our quarterly targets still need to be met. Shareholders and the dead god must be appeased. But promotions and dismissals, the rewards you get for going above and beyond, and the punishment you deserve for failing to meet your expectations will be determined by games of chance going forward. These are yet to be determined and will apply to all levels up until level 7.”
Pierre groaned silently…
“For all of you level 7s here today, in order to accede to the inner hidden church, executive leadership, you will need to partake in a special secret initiation ritual, you must become sworn servants of the Dead God, you must meet him and swear fealty”
God dammit, thought Pierre. Public sex, it always ended up being public sex rituals. Why were the ultra rich so unimaginative? Would he have to let Hardeep fuck him in front of all his peers? Would he need to eat someone’s golden seed or deflower a virgin? Tech workers aren’t actually virgins, even if they behaved like them. How would a 19th century sex ritual even work with technically-not-virgins?
He knew Archer had come to the same conclusion and was grinning slightly. Dammit, was that pervert going straight to the top because he was basically at home with chemsex? Pierre’s competitive rage was overwhelming his innate snooty French coyness.
Hardeep continued, “Step forward, level 8 aspirants, which one of you will undergo the ritual, take the sacrament inside you, and meet the Dead God?”
This was going to be public buggery, and Pierre wished that he’d at least douched beforehand. But he’d out-bugger Archer, that was for sure, he’d meet the “dead god” first, or whatever the new euphemism was for Hardeep’s cock. He stepped forward along with Archer.
“Neophytes! Welcome to the ritual! All others leave this sacred place immediately. Initiates, please lie back in the ritual pillows near the altar and remove your capes”
Here goes, thinks, Pierre, at least this is the least boring corporate retreat I’ve ever been to. And it’s just me and Archer, oiled up and lying back in front of the altar? Maybe we’re going to have to fuck each other while the preacher chants that made up mumbo jumbo? Oh he wanted to fuck the smirk off of Archer’s face.. And if Archer was ordered to fuck him first? Oh well then, inshallah, he’d out-bottom him. Hardeep and whatever his new kitsch Berlin god was would be drooling in reverence. He was already growing inappropriately aroused for a corporate retreat in his tight speedos at the mere thought of settling that centuries old Franco-English rivalry, definitively, tonight.
“Nurse, bring out the holy sacrament! That these neophytes might die and meet the Dead God at the End of Time!”
Pierre was terrified now, and almost on the verge of tears, although he’s somehow pleased to notice that Archer is just as terrified. Someone dressed up like a goth nurse appears at their side, in black scrubs and a little frilly black French maid apron. Oh the costume people really had a bit of fun with this, thinks Pierre, and all tax deductible too. She’s bearing two syringes and several vials on a silver tray.
“What the hell is that” whispers Pierre to the “nurse”. Eyes wide with fear.
“Oh don’t worry too much, you won’t die forever, but it’ll feel like it perhaps. His holy sacrament is 200mg of racemic ketamine. Each. Intramuscular.” replies the Nurse.
Archer laughs with visible relief. This is probably just a regular weekend for that pervert, thinks Pierre.
Pierre accepts the sacrament along with Archer into his left deltoid muscle, settles into his altar pillow, holds Archer’s clammy hand as he nestles besides him in a sudden display of camaraderie, his last words before going to meet the Dead God at the End of Time are:
“Ahhh this explains why Hardeep was so upset about that priest”
“Ketamine!!!” Laughs Archer, “asshole has one k hole in Berlin, gets freaked out by the sight of a weird priest..and invents a new corporate religion. I mean, that’s just another Saturday for some people..yeah yeah we’ve all seen the time knife..”, Archer begins free associating as the drug takes hold.
Pierre’s face muscles slacken and his head falls across Archer’s oiled chest. Time and gravity end abruptly.
+++
“Tell me, what did you learn from the sacrament? What is in the dead god’s mouth at the end of time?” Harjeet asks.
Harjeet is pleased with himself and this little test he’s devised. He’s almost always pleased with himself, and appears largely to have recovered from the k-hole terrors that prompted his debut into pomo occult kitsch, Pierre notes regretfully.
Pierre turns and exchanges glances with Archer. It’s the Monday morning after that chaotic corporate retreat in Phnom Penh. They’re both in Harjeet’s executive office.
No more speedos and capes. Harjeet’s adherence to his own diktats of his new religion is inconsistent and unpredictable. Pierre knows this is a classic executive leadership move to keep power firmly centralised, and he’s always wondered whether Harjeet has learnt this from a coach or peer, or whether he does this instinctually.
Neither Pierre nor Archer had any idea what to wear this morning. Attempt their own interpretation of “Thelemite practitioner meets 21st century company man” and figure out the decorative accessories the costume would require, or opt for the much more familiar business casual uniform?
They had chosen the latter, and apart from being panda-eyed from the weekend’s residual eyeliner, lending their corporate attire a rakish air belying the psychological scarring from that weird weekend retreat, they’re both feeling somewhat normal. Or as normal as two tech salarymen can feel about being asked on a Monday morning by their company’s CEO about the contents of a dead god’s mouth at the end of time.
What’s in the dead god’s mouth? thinks Pierre? After the injection, he’d experienced a few minutes of bliss before he was struck by a searing pain and much shouting as the priest’s teeth dug into his armpit.
There had been a miscommunication, he was told later by the “nurse”, and the priest had also been offered the sacrament.
Pyotr, the unscrupulous and mostly inscrutable Siberian Orthodox priest had enthusiastically unlatched his vestments, dropping them to his waist to expose a slender frame and a whip-scarred back. He’d tilted his shoulder – in a much more lascivious movement than one normally expects of a priest – towards the nurse and willingly accepted a heroic dose of sacrament. The shouting started about five minutes later.
Pierre last remembered the musky, relaxing smell of Archer’s baby oil-adorned chest, and had settled into a delightful memory of his childhood, walking through the family vineyards in the dry heat of late August, remembering small details about that memory with shocking clarity.
He remembered the smell of summer, the dry earth between the rows in that north-facing vineyard, and the sounds of the summer crickets at dusk. He remembered his first summer love at 16 with one of the seasonal workers, consummated under a tree adjacent to those orderly rows of vines. It was a passionate romance that went on until the grapes were harvested in mid September, when the seasonal workers departed.
He remembered the sadness of that final feast his father put on that year on the last day of the harvest. The pleasure and sadness of that celebration that marked the end of summer and the end of his summer romance. He’d been so happy all through those teenage years. He’d grown up in paradise, but didn’t know it at the time. He couldn’t remember another time in his life when he’d been this happy, but there was really nothing he could have done to change the course of events that had already begun back then with his father’s secret but steadily escalating gambling addiction. It was sad, that longing for home is after it’s long gone, thought Pierre. Or maybe it was the only way one truly appreciated home. Fish long for water only once they’ve been yanked out of it.
Just as this realisation dawned on him, he awoke. Face down. Pyotr straddling his back, biting his armpit and growling. Pyotr released his hold on him, held his face up, and clutched the iron cross around his neck, chanting in an inexplicable language. Pierre guessed that in Pyotr’s mind he was a demonic Siberian beast to whom Pyotr was administering a deranged exorcism.
Hardeep was nowhere to be found, apparently believing that his initiates would quietly meet the Dead God in silence. Archer was groaning in the the corner, speaking in a cockney patois that Pierre had never heard him use before, he couldn’t tell if the cooing baby talk coming out of Archer was directed at a child or a mistress. It was hard for him to tell with Archer what was sincere, what was sexual, and what was snarky English charm at the best of times. If Pierre hazarded a guess, he imagined that Archer was reliving an experience with a childhood nanny who’d initiated him into adult relations. How very typical, thought Pierre, of an English childhood. No wonder they were all perverts, Pierre thinks from the perch of his unarguably wholesome Frenchness.
Pierre knew enough about the sacrament to understand that each of the three men were undergoing completely different experiences. He mostly just hoped the priest wouldn’t bite him again, and that his subtle attempts to extricate himself from the priest’s grasp wouldn’t antagonise him any further, whatever the nervous priest with the weirdly sensual lips thought he was.
What could they have in common? What precious memories or experiences were they living now? The fake posh kid was cooing in cockney, the skinny priest was yowling in cyrillic glossolalia, and Pierre the melancholic provincial pinned down firmly under Pyotr, still savouring the dying embers of his teenage memory.
They each were men far away from home and from any sense of control over their lives, dancing for their supper in the culture free zone of hyper-capitalism that was Singapore’s most notable global export, at the whim of an uncultured bogan who’d had the arrogance to believe that they were all extras in his life. The Dead God? Of course no one here had seen it except Hardeep. The question was unanswerable. As was the possibility of promotion.
He was done. Pierre was tired of acting. Tired of feigning interest in a predatory industry. Tired of the hype cycle, of forecast calls, of quarterly investor reports, tired of the trite antihumanism of tech and its close cousin, finance.
Pierre’s resolution was interrupted by the grunting priest on top of him, who’s movements had turned somewhat confused and..sensual? He was nipping this further weird turn in the bud. He turned over and embraced the priest, holding him tightly, preventing him from wriggling free. He began gently rocking Pyotr and cooing soothing words into his ears.
Pyotr initially resisted, and then began weeping quietly into Pierre’s chest. Archer stumbled over and embraced them both, joining them in tears.
Pierre’s rupture with the Future had begun. A future without vision, just more of the same and a little shinier. A future where tech openly fantasised about making their own devs obsolete, where disruption was just code for depredation, where innovation was an overused marketing term that mostly meant some new tech-mediated form of super-austerity, and the pseudoscience of software engineering which was touted as a panacea to any of the hard challenges facing humanity. He was tired of playing tech’s snake oil prophet to a phoney future. He might have felt, decades ago, that he was vaguely bored of the traditional provincial life, but whatever this milieu was, this Asia-pacific incarnation of capitalism, it was indescribably dreary and cliched.
He laughed bitterly at the irony, a century ago the Western world had erupted into Asia, seeking novelty from the east, consuming Asian cultures like a bored aesthete, and now rich, booming Asia was wearing the dessicated corpse of European culture like a costume. That is, if Europe’s culture could be distilled into European luxury fashion brands, supercars, and champagne. Perhaps that’s really all there was to Europe’s arrogant self-image, from the perspective of non-Europeans, Europe was just a.. holding company of luxury brands to everyone from the non-western world. He felt the bile of negation in his throat, no to tired old eurocentric arrogance, no to whatever the fuck this predatory Asian incarnation of capitalism was..Fuck them all.
Pierre dreamed of cashing out all his RSUs and stock portfolio, dropping all his tech devices into the Mediterranean, and buying a house with a garden patch on a remote Greek island where the average age is around 70. He would have a bookshelf and a notebook and a goat and a buxom Greek bartender as a lover. Maybe Pyotr and Archer would come along, he hoped, and he might even grow fond of Pyotr’s bites and weird Siberian sensuality. All four of them plus the goat would share a giant bed, and they’d dance and drink raki and do imported ketamine until the wee hours every night. But who the hell knows what peculiar and deeply personal epiphanies the others were having right now?
Back in Harjeet’s office, Pierre puts his corporate iPhone down in front of the CEO, gets up and walks out without saying a word. He’s surprised and touched to notice Archer doing the same thing right behind him, then following him out, leaving behind a stunned Harjeet.
“So, about that Greek island?” Archer says to Pierre with a smile. “Pyotr has some contacts through his church, we might as well go now, June is a lovely month in the Mediterranean”.