Introduction
This is the prologue to a novel I have been working on for one, three, or seven years depending who you ask. While the idea has changed a lot since it's inception during my AP Literature Class during high school, first reading Marx, and now, I have come away with something I can be proud of. The novel is still in its last few days of editing, and since my family heritage did not offer me any great connections in the world of professional literature, the hope is to have the puppy out around Christmas/New Years on Amazon Kindle Publishing. This is by no means a promise, as this book has aways been a pet project of mine, more intended to be a fun project to work on than a cohesive interesting money-making thought provoking think-piece. That insane hedge being said, I feel as though I have written something funny and worthwhile, and I'm very excited to finally have it published.
Get a Job, Todd! is a work of Satirical fiction, focused on a man, twenty-seven year old Todd Jacobson, who is an out of work landscaper trying to find a living in the year 2065. Todd has grown up assailed by a hyper-monopolized corporate world, a horrible single-headed market that has even consumed the Government of the United States in its grand reach for power.
In this post is the first section of the Prologue. The story takes some twists and turns that might not be expected, and I feel as though this is as good a place as any to issue this legal and literary warning: This is a work of satire, parody, and fiction. Though some names may resemble or reflect that of real world businesses or people in the public eye, this book is not in any way claiming real-world relevance. While aiming to make people laugh, it is by all means parody. Used to make a point throughout the story, these resemblances do not reflect the real world companies other than that of parody. Hopefully that covers my bases. This work may also be wildly different than the final draft, or at least different in some small minor ways that are so important to me that in retrospect it was wild I didn't have them in the first place.
Without further ado: the first part of the Prologue to, Get a Job, Todd!
Todd’s bare ass stuck to the cold metal table. It must have been over twenty minutes. With his head quite un-comfortably resting on a hard steel pillow, he wondered why the doctors had made him strip and lay down so early if they were only going to make him wait. Maybe, he thought, the serum preparation was taking longer than they had expected. He shivered. Would doctors who underestimate the necessary time for cryogenic serum preparation really be trustworthy enough to have complete control of his unconscious body? Jolts of energy shot down his legs, making them kick idly.
Clang, clang, clang.
Maybe the serum preparation was taking just as long as it normally does, and they had only told him it would, ‘just take a minute,’ to ease his mind. But Todd’s mind was not eased, the cold of the metal table leaked into his bones. Did he really want liars in charge of his unconscious body?
Across the room on a small unassuming white table sat his clothes - ratty jeans and an old stained, smelly tee-shirt - neatly folded and placed in a plastic red bin, done exactly as per the instruction video he watched in the waiting room over thirty minutes prior.
“Don’t be mistaken, friends!” An overly enthusiastic AI Generated figure beamed on the 16k, uber-high definition flat screen television in the waiting room. “The clothes on your back are the very same ones that you’ll be taking with you to your new Martian Home!”
The figure patted its own red plastic bin in its digital world, “We know that the creature comforts you are used to on this ol’ hunk of dirt will be missed up there, but rest assured that if you strip down and place your shirts, pants, and socks into this hermetically sealed red box like this,” The AI man folded an AI shirt and AI pants before gingerly throwing in a perfectly clean pair of white AI socks, “the doctors will be in before you know it and you’ll get to have your very own clothes on your new home!”
It winked.
Sat reclined on the cold metal table, Todd considered this Televised AI guide. He, or rather it, had brown hair and blue eyes just like a man would, just like Todd did. It had all the clothes on its back, and presumably, all ten fingers.
That had once been the defining method for identifying the difference between AI creations and flesh and blood ‘real’ people - though this issue had been patched years ago. Todd even found himself momentarily confused if they had actually somehow found a real actor for the video. He would have been fooled completely, if it hadn't been for one key detail…
It struck him just how genuinely excited the man on the screen had been. Every word that erupted from the speakers dripped onto the linoleum floor with thick, viscous sincerity. True, disgusting, honest emotion. This key difference clued Todd into his realization. No human, no matter the pay or training would ever sound so earnest. He had never in his life heard such pure unadulterated enthusiasm from a fellow flesh-and-bone human. It seemed to him that the only people who spoke with pure emotion, the only things in his whole world that shone with a color rather than a pallet of dull gray, were the AI advertisements.
When the self-congratulatory smile on Todd’s face finally drifted away, AI was still on his mind, and he found himself reviewing old dreams and hopes. Well why not, this was his last day on Earth after all, no time like the present. Todd’s original goal in life, as many goals do, sprung from the ashes of his father’s failed dream.
Back in the day, when Todd’s father, good ol’ Donald Jacobson, still had hair on his head and none on his back, he saved up a whole year of grocery store clerking to pay for his freshman year of college. He had his sharp eye on an advertising degree. Donn dreamed of making it big, becoming a CEO, becoming somebody. Donny dreamed of being more than just a forgettable worker, more than just an employment number. Boy could Donny dream, and boy how dreams can linger.
That particular dream lasted so long in fact, that even when the University ran him broke during his third semester and forced him to work at a phone factory to support a burgeoning family, he bequeathed it to his son.
“All that’s left to do Toddy-Boy,” he would say from time to time in his world famous drunken stupor, “Hic, are the goddamned advertisements.” Todd’s father was sickeningly acquainted with the ads for beer, and could probably quote them from memory if prompted.
“If you don’t wanna be living on the streets by my age, boy,” his thirty-five year old father would tell him in his earliest memories, “learn how to make those silly little artificial ‘intellegiencias’ or whatever they’re doing now. Find a way to sell dog food to cat owners. Find a way to sell mousetraps to rats. That’s how we’ll be a happy family.”
Under his father’s instructions, Todd applied for college the minute after he graduated high school. Like any dutiful son would. Within the day of applying, Central Idaho Business University had accepted his enrollment - along with the $3,000 pre-tuition payment.
CIBU was a private university established in 2051, only 5 years before Todd attended his halfhearted first semester. Legally owned by the State Government, all of its profits went into the hands of National University Associates International, a subsidiary of Global Education Networks - owned by Amazon.com.
A tidy $20,000 a semester, CIBU was the only real option that graduating high schoolers could choose if they grew up in the central Idaho region, primarily due to the ‘Right to Education Bill’ that passed through the US senate in 2040.
This immaculate piece of legislation included such stipulations as, “Every citizen of the United States has the right to pay for any public or private university education that applies to their future career path,” and “If a citizen chooses to not pay for a higher education, they have the right to work for any government owned, private or public trade along with a $100,000 training fee. If such a fee cannot be paid, citizens have the right to work off their training fee payments for the first 10 years of their employment.”
This wonderful work of the United States Senate was penned and supported by Secretary of Education Jeff Bezos.
Todd considered himself very lucky then, that CIBU had such a pristine Advertisement Major program.
Though the first few weeks were digestible enough for his average intellect, it was a Macroeconomics course that had made Todd drop out in the end. Keynesian Economics, Supply and Demand Models, LRAS increasing the price higher than market equilibrium and adjusting GDP… it was all too much for Todd H. Jacobson.
Ironically, it had been Microeconomics that his father just couldn't grasp - he really was more of a big picture guy.
It's not as though the son of Donn Jacobson would have made it very far in the advertisement field anyway. Todd was of a generally dull sort, though you would hardly guess by his looks.
No glasses graced his freckled face, but something about him seemed vaguely academic. He spent much of his life squinting his bright blue eyes, giving the impression that he really should have glasses and must have taken them off for some reason or another. Despite this, or perhaps because he really did need glasses and nobody bothered to tell him, he just barely squeaked through his classes at William Gates High School.
In sync with his curriculum at school, part of the education that his father had given to him at home had Todd grow up believing that anybody could - and should - become a businessman. This teaching was hammered in by his teachers in school, telling him outright that only a dolt would miss out on the opportunity to climb a corporate ladder. Workers are expendable and disposable, if you want to matter in this world, own a business. Otherwise you might as well be forgotten.
No matter how dull you are, if you just have a bit of hard work and a lot of determination, you too can become a CEO of your very own dream business! Of course, that message was all a part of the new education curriculum signed on by Secretary Bezos the year before the first of his five terms as president.
Predictably, a young towheaded Todd absorbed this messaging as a sponge, and constructed the childish dream to become the CEO of his very own advertisement firm.
‘Jacobson’s Advertisements,’ so the name was in his dream. He never had a great imagination, one of the eventual reasons he dropped out of college wholesale - there's a great comfort in your fathers footsteps.
Todd took the loss in stride, applied for a job as a landscaper for T Landscaping International with a quick two week unpaid internship period to work off the mandatory training fee debt he couldn’t pay. Quite short compared to other work-debt programs. All in all, the job had been alright for Todd. He was able to get outside in the sun, meet - or at least see - rich clients of international business. Sure, he was only paid $5 an hour, but he only had to work sixteen hour work days six days a week, and ten hours on Sunday.
The weekend and forty hour work week were repealed after China’s GDP overtook that of the US’s in 2035. In the grand scheme of things Todd was very lucky, most of his peers didn't get the 6 hours off on Sundays.
The only member of his family to actually obtain a degree was his mother. Hanging proudly over her side of the bed, the shiny white document read: ‘Boise State University, To All Persons Be It Known That ‘Darla Quinn’ Having Completed The Prescribed Studies And Satisfied The Requirements For The Degree ‘Bachelor of Arts in Language and Communication’ Has Accordingly Been Admitted To That Degree with rights, privileges, and immunities thereunto appertaining.’
Darla, a woman with straw blonde hair styled in a bob complimented by striking blue eyes, made sure to use those rights and privileges her degree awarded her as often as she could. In her eyes, life seemed to provide her exactly what she needed and not an ounce more. For example, the institution at which she obtained her degree was demolished within two years of her graduation by the State Government, who had sold the property to a Phone Manufacturing Plant. It was at this plant that she ended up finding a job, and a husband in one Donald Jacobson. They met while building processors. What a lucky woman to have the universe looking out for her like that.
Of course, Todd never owned a phone. Though he desperately wanted to, the price tag of any cellular device with any functionality past a single two hour phone call per day was far out of the family’s price range.
During his youth, this had been one of the many sparks for his parent’s bickering. It would begin with Donny’s signature drunken droning on and on, “God dammit this used to be a country, we was… we all, hick, we all had phones in our pockets like, like… we didn’t have to work so… hard…”
“Well then why don’t you work harder Donny.” His mother’s venom was always delivered with such accuracy. “My daddy worked hard for me. He was a real hard worker, Donny. He worked hard enough to get me a phone.”
Within the dark refuge of his childhood bedroom in which he would wait out the storm of his parent’s arguments, Todd heard everything they said, but he never believed a word. Despite the interesting rhetorical devices implemented by his parents - screaming until your throat bleeds chief among them - a deeper truth sat like a coiled dragon in his heart. Taught to him by every school curriculum, television show, and conversation with a peer. A nice life was not for him.
Todd knew deep down that things like Phones, nice houses, easy jobs, were all a luxury only those who truly worked hard deserved. This fact plagued his life. He was in the working class, nice things were something only the strong could get, and the strong deserve more. The Privileged, the real hard workers. People like his Boss in adulthood, Berry Dornwood at T Landscaping International, who came in to oversee the landscaping projects three times a week, for example.
Now there was a man. Berry Donnwood, six foot even, silver hair, eighty-nine years old, paper-thin white skin, and only on his third heart! That’s someone who worked hard. That was a man who deserved to live in luxury. Luxury enough to get a facelift that only looked a little synthetic. Luxury enough to have weekends off. Luxury enough to afford an actual good apartment, not like the $2,000/month, 400 square foot apartment on the outskirts of town Todd lived in.
Laying on the cold hospital bed, he recoiled in his mind at the thought of his apartment. A sour smell pervaded the entire building, and it seemed to emanate directly from the matte gray unpainted walls themselves.
Sleep was nearly impossible. In any direction during the night some couple or another would be having a competition as to who could make somebody call the cops faster. Or the police would be having a mindful conversation about how hard to kick a man while he’s down. There was always a child screaming somewhere, and he would be lucky if an hour passed without the confident bark of a stray dog.
Most days the faucets wouldn't run, despite the bi-monthly extra five-hundred dollar water fee that was automatically taken out of his bank account. Heating was hit or miss, Air conditioning even more so. Summers were far too hot and winters were spent under a fort of blankets and pillows - the few he could afford. Scuttling was near constant in the walls, and at night the mystery creatures enjoyed exploring his bathroom and kitchen floor. Be it oversized rats or way too oversized bugs Todd wasn’t initially certain, but found it eventually to be both.
It was for this reason he bought his dog. A gray-brown strange mangy stray from the pound. No bigger than a breadbox. Unfortunately even his poor animal companion opted to cower under the sheets with his new owner rather than deal with whatever-the-hell roamed the apartment's floors at night. Todd had really been hoping the dog would want to eat the creatures in the night for more than just extermination purposes. Largely due to the incredible fees he had to pay for the dog, most days Todd could hardly find the funds to buy him food - most days it was hard enough to feed himself.
To top it all off, he could never get in any sort of contact with his landlord conglomerate firm, Southern Idaho Property Management Inc, a subsidiary of National Realty Management, which was owned by Amazon.com. The U.S. Government was a majority stockholder, and the president served as chairman of the board for the company. Their contact department had never been staffed, but the phones sure were connected.
Life in the SIPM Apartment on the outskirts of Boise Idaho, working for T Landscaping International for the CIBU dropout Todd Jacobson was, by all accounts including his own, completely rotten and downright terrible. Everything seemed to bring him nothing but more misery and more work.
Everything except for the crows.
Todd believed he had a special relationship with crows. They began their visits to him during his youth and their presence in his life remained constant. When he saw the animals as a child, he imagined that the only human on the whole planet they cared about was him and only him.
Crows watched him as he walked to school, observing him from outside every window during his classes. Gifts and help were frequent, and slowly came to be expected. They brought him shoes he lost on the playground. They picked his favorite toy that slipped into the mud and left him petrified in regret. On multiple occasions they distracted him or flew in his face to stop him from walking into traffic when nobody else was around to help.
Todd liked to imagine they had a special purpose all lined up just for him. In a world where he knew he would grow up to be either a businessman or useless worker, it was nice to know he had several sets of eyes on him at any given moment. A big feathery safety net.
While not every day, every week, or even every month, it seemed as though not a season would pass without at least one instance of help from a corvid. Magpie, Raven, or even the occasional blue jay would come to help him from time to time. What began as crows playing with him in the sandbox in his youth, turned to Magpie bringing him a $50 bill before prom, and eventually an enormous Raven retrieving his lost apartment keys that had fallen down a sewer grate.
After a while, he just assumed that the black birds always just wanted him to get where he wanted to go. For no particular reason, they seemed to follow him to his work, make sure he got home safe, checked to make sure he woke up on time, and anything in between. Strange, as they never seemed to gain anything from helping him get from place to place. Though he would feed them from when he could - a holdover from his magical childhood - it was more of a conciliatory gesture. The crows never seemed to ask for anything in return for this incessant help. He figured after a while that crows honestly liked helping him get to where he wanted to go. There was no other explanation that he could find.
Such was his explanation for the phenomenon when he was asked. Not a popular one, but it seemed to quell even the most curious. Most days the work was too hard and the sun was too hot for anyone to want to inquire further anyway - not to mention the threat of termination for personal conversations on the clock.
It had been just earlier, only hours before he stripped his clothes, adhered his bare ass to the chill metal table, and waited for the doctors of questionable trustworthiness to complete the damn serum. Unlike the typical gifts - such as exact change for the toll bridge that would help him get to where he needed to go and stay out of prison for debt - this gift seemed to be completely useless.
Just before he stepped into the large cylindrical building in which he now lay, the biggest raven he had ever seen flew in front of his face, hovered for a moment, and dropped a small metal piece into his hand. Warm to the touch, the piece was about two inches long and shaped like a capital ‘L’, with its short end about an inch wide and rounded. Its long end came to a pyramidal sharp point. The whole thing shone brightly in the summer sun.
It sat in his hand for a minute as he looked into the huge raven’s eyes. Black pits. Without a caw, it jetted upward, leaving behind a thick black feather that slowly and silently drifted to the ground. Todd shoved the metal piece into his pocket with a frown as he looked into the air. Poor birds wanted to help him one last time, he figured. They must not know he was destined for a new life. How could they?
He took a step forward before kneeling down to pick up the feather, placing it in his pocket next to the strange piece, and continuing on into the building. He was to start a new life after all. Nothing about Earth mattered anymore. Soon he would be blasted off into space in a cryogenic slumber. Having one final souvenir from the crows did seem fitting. Goodbye earth.
Todd signed up for United States Space Program Incorporated - Sponsored by Pepsi, an Amazon Family Company™ - after he was fired from his landscaping job for unprofessionally talking about his dog on work time and on company property - double offense.
Todd knew what he was doing was wrong, but he had just gotten the pooch and couldn't help forgetting to brush all of the dog hairs BEFORE clocking in, and, when asked, he described the dog as “little guy.” Todd knew the moment the words left his mouth his job was forfeit.
With enough brains to know that he would only last a week with no job, and almost a million dollars worth of debt on his back, he quickly enlisted in the Corporation's program having heard of it only a week before. The loud and brightly colored advertisements played on every television in town, every minute, every day. In the advert, another genuinely excited AI gleefully goaded college dropouts and debt riddled street wanderers into the shiny, newly constructed, USSP-INC building five miles from town.
“You don’t need nothin’ but the clothes on your back!” It would say with that same, all too genuine shimmering smile.
Todd tried to disregard advertisements wholesale after he dropped out of college, but it got harder and harder each year. On their first day of airing he got the general message. The excited AI woman would say, “No job? Troubled with some Debt? Well then please feel welcome to come on down and enlist in the program and have a place to live for a whole lifetime.”
Mars was to be the destination, and janitorial work was to be his occupation. It rhymed, and Todd felt that that was enough for him. Sweeping and mopping, wiping and dusting… That was The Life, or rather, that would be The Life very soon. His mouth shone a toothy grin as he pictured himself pushing red Mars dust around with a broom. He would have a new job soon, and he wouldn’t be useless anymore...
What is taking them so long? He asked himself, straining his neck to look at the closed gray door. The back of his head thumped on the table again and filled his mind again with janitorial daydreams. Tapping the back of his heels on the cold steel beneath him, Todd imagined himself walking through miles and miles of white, clean hallways. He looked left and saw nothing but clean floors and walls. He looked right to see the same. How simple it would all be so, so soon.
On Mars, Todd imagined he would never have to worry about the myriad of menial, grading chores that seemed to dominate his every waking moment on Earth. Never again would he have to worry about finding another job, or having enough for rent, or a stable future. All he had to do would be: wake up, go to work, eat food, go to bed. That’s all he ever would need.
No more rushing out of bed early in the morning. No more tattered shoes that soak rainwater into the socks and make your feet unbearably itchy for hours. No more forgetting change on the privately owned toll bridges and needing to rely on crows…
The smile on Todd’s face faded as he furrowed his brow. The small metal piece, which by all means should be in the same pocket as it had been when he took the pants off minutes ago, careened through his mind to disturb the peace of his thoughts.
Of everything the birds had ever dropped in his hands throughout his life, this was the strangest only in that it had no apparent purpose. Surely the crows couldn’t know that he was leaving the planet forever? Maybe this was something that he could have found a use for around the house, it did have the same look and feel as many of his kitchen appliances…
Could the crows know he was leaving? If so, could this be something that will be useful on the Red Planet? Perhaps they knew somehow he would lose his house key up there, and decided to steal an extra one from the laboratory before they shot him out of the atmosphere.
A puff of air left Todd’s nostrils. There was no time to think about that now. Whether or not the crow’s final gift was anything important or just the final parting gift of some strange feathered friends did not matter now. Silly birds. Todd was headed to Mars to be a Janitor. His smile returned.
Birds will be Birds.
William Carney
Boise, Idaho
November, 4, 2024
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