The Buzzmachine

“We have all the time in the world,” Frank sank into his fluffy armchair and sighed. He loved his job. All he had to do all day was to sit in a room filled with action figures and memorabilia, with his best friend Burt at his side, drinking coffee and joking around. Only once in a while, an order was delivered. It came in an envelope, and as soon as they received it, they had to type in a special type of code into the buzzmachine. He had been working here for over two years, but if anyone asked him what he did, he'd have trouble explaining it. Technically, he was legally forbidden to discuss it. And also, he didn't really believe in all this technology. To him it was some millionaire’s whimsy, paying them to come here everyday and turn on the buzzmachine. To Frank, the buzzmachine sounded a lot like magic, and he didn’t believe in magic. An envelope came in through a slot in the wall. Burt got up and picked it up. It was time to do some work. 

“Alright let’s put them on,” said Burt. 

“Put what on?” Frank asked, staring at the monitor.

“The tinfoil hats,” Burt said, tapping his temple. They weren’t really tinfoil hats, they were cast aluminum hardhats, lined with layers of zinc and copper.

“Right, right, right. So what’s on for today?” Frank asked, stretching himself.

“Let’s see… Yellow bucket hats with flowers, pineapple shower foam, black jogger pants, squishy watermelon earrings.” Burt murmured, reading from the piece of paper in his hand.

“Squishy watermelon earrings? I’ve never heard about anything like that,” Frank said.

“Yep. Thanks to the hat,” Burt replied.

“Squishy earrings, pff. No one’s gonna buy that. That’s stupid,” Frank sputtered.

“They’re popular. I think I saw a deal on A-bozon.”

“Who would wear that kind of thing?” Frank said.

“Hey! They don’t pay us to think. They pay us to feed the codes in,” Burt pointed at the computer.

“Right. What if one day, we type in something different? Like, ‘kill all humans’ hehehe," Frank grumbled, “turn the fan up, will you? Can’t fucking breathe in this place,” he pulled his tinfoil hat out of the drawer and put it on, leaving the straps open. He picked up his coffee mug, leaned back and put his feet on the desk. Burt was busy, with his hat strapped on tightly, typing code on the keyboard. Frank scanned his screen, double checking Burt's code, to make sure there were no mistakes.

Suddenly there was a loud bang on the door. Not a knock, a loud ‘thud’ as if something very heavy had hit the door. Dust and bits of plaster fell on the floor. Burt and Frank froze in their seats, looking at each other. Frank blinked, his “Best dad in the galaxy” mug two inches away from his mouth. 

“What the…” he gasped. A second thud and the door fell in with the frame, spraying shards of wood and bits of rubble everywhere. Burt and Frank put their hands up.

***

The interrogation room was cold, damp and smelled of mold. Mike Carson, a seasoned detective, sniffed the air and his clean cut mustache moved with his nose. They need to do something about that smell. He's told his boss repeatedly about the conditions, but he just laughed saying it's better like that. Mike sat down on his cozy armchair and looked at Frank, cuffed to a very uncomfortable, metal wire chair. Frank gave him a death stare, with his arms crossed and his lips pressed tightly together. He’s been in there for four hours already and his buttocks should be really sore already. Mike had just come back from his break in the sleep pod and was as fresh as a petal. Well, maybe not as a petal, but as fresh as a forty five year old, seasoned detective could get after a good nap.

“So what is it that you do exactly?” Mike asked in a friendly tone.

“I already told you. We put the code into the buzzmachine.”

“What is the buzzmachine?” Mike asked.

“I don’t really know,” Frank answered. Mike sighed. 

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” he asked. 

“They said not to ask questions,”

“Who is they?”

“Well, there’s really just this one dude,”

“What’s his name?”

“Al,”

“Al? Al who?”

“He introduced himself once, his name is um… Alonzo Leghorn,”

“Alonzo Leghorn? That doesn’t sound right. Are you sure that’s his real name?”

“I dunno,” Frank shrugged.

“What are the hats for?”

“Protection,”

“Protection from what?”

“You, know. Just in case,”

“In case what?”

“I dunno,”

“What do you think the buzzmachine does?”

“It gives people ideas, I suppose,”

“What kind of ideas?”

“I dunno,”

“It looks like this guy’s middle name is Eve Asian,” Rogers said, popping his head in through the door.

“What? No, that’s just his name,” Mike joked back. They chuckled bitterly. Rogers gestured to Mike. He got up and joined him outside the room. 

“This thing has a nationwide range. The machine transfers the signal to surrounding stations,” Rogers informed him. 

“How? Are they… using cellphone towers?” Mike asked.. This buzzmachine thing turned out to be more serious than he had thought.

“Huh. Funny, it’s not in the files,” Rogers flipped through the papers.

“Is that even legal?"

“Of course it’s not legal. But then again, there’s regulation against that kind of thing yet.”

***

Van Hoffer was in a sour mood. He took a sip of his high roast, Congolese triple espresso and grimaced. 

“Sit down,” he said to Mike and Rogers. They sat down and looked at their boss. 

“Is something wrong?” Mike asked.

“I’ve been getting calls all morning,” Van Hoffer said grimly.

“Regarding our buzz janitors?”

“Calls from who?” Rogers asked.

“Well, as it turns out, our arrest has affected the GDP,” Van Hoffer said, raising his eyebrows.

“How is that possible? Those two idiots?” Rogers pointed at the door.

“These people have no idea who they’re working for or what they’ve been doing. This company, they hire people like them on purpose. They’ve got no education, no experience. They train them a little bit, teach them basic coding skills. They feed in the data, but if anyone asks them what they’ve been doing they really don’t know.”

“Come on boss, they know,” Mike scoffed.

“OK, maybe they have a general idea of how things work, but not the mechanics.”

“But they do put on their tinfoil hats. They gotta know what they’re for,” Rogers said.

“Right, about that, I gotta remember to get myself one of those,” Van Hoffer murmured, shuffling the papers on his desk. 

“So tinfoil really works?” Rogers asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

“It works for whatever this thing is emitting,” Van Hoffer answered. 

“So who’s got stakes in this?” Mike asked. His boss looked at him.

“Everybody Mike. Everybody.”

***

It was a cold autumn morning. Mike and Rogers stood under the huge white coil mounted on a tall, triangular tower. Mike took some pictures from underneath the structure. It looked like a gigantic shiny donut.

“So let me get it straight. This thing gets shut down and people stop buying stuff?” Rogers asked, putting his hands on his hips.

“No, they still buy things like soap and condoms. Just not the useless shit,”

“This thing?”

“Yep,”

“I heard that the president called,”

“The president.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means we’re putting the janitors back.”

“Really? The president?”

“I don’t know it’s just a rumor.”

“Unbelievable,”

They turned around and got into the car. When they got back to the office, Van Hoffer had news for them.

“We gotta let them go,” he said.

“So it was all for nothing,” Mike sighed.

“Not necessarily,” Van grabbed one of the tin hardhats from under the desk and put it over his phone. 

“We’ve hacked…the buzzmachine,” he said in a hoarse whisper and grinned, “they’ll keep doing what they’re doing and we’ll feed what we want into it,”

“What we want? Like what?” Mike asked.

“We’ll see, we’ll play around with it,” Van Hoffer shrugged and gave Mike a crazy grin. Mike Carson felt his throat tighten as he nervously watched his boss getting more and more excited. Envisioning him playing around with a psychotronic piece of consciousness altering equipment, made him feel a primal fear. It welled up in his stomach and made his eye start to twitch. 

“What do you mean play around with it?” he asked weakly.

“Well, for starters, we’ll cut down on the ‘buying bullshit’ waves. Did you know these are special waves that target a specific area in the brain?”

“I did not.”

“You should read some of those files, pretty interesting stuff,” Van Hoffer patted a stack of papers on the desk, “I got copies of everything just in case,” he added in a hushed voice. 

“Right,”

“Hey, stop looking at me like you’re about to shit your pants Carson. We’re doing a service to humanity here.”

“Are we?”

“Look, my wife, Myrtle, you know my wife, right? She spends two hundred dollars a week, ordering shit online, that she forgets about two days later. I thought it was like… a condition or something. But it turns out it’s not. It’s this fucking thing.”

***

It was a day like any other day in the office, once again. Except that today Frank dropped his pen and bent over to pick it up. When he emerged from under the desk, his hat was gone. He never bothered to put the straps on.

“Frank! Your hat!” Bob yelled. But Frank was already gone. He looked at Burt with a blank stare.

“Frank! We’re right under the tower. The frequency will fry your brain!" Burt yelled trying to get to his friend. In a stupor, Frank reached for his phone, his eyes wide open.

“I gotta get me one of those…”

“Frank, no!”

“Oneofthoseoneofthoseoneofthose…”

“Stop it!” Burt unwrapped himself from the fluffy chair and dived under the desk, reaching for Frank’s hat, “where the heck is it?” he spotted the hat, iit had rolled over to the wall. 

“One of those inflatable cupholders and a pineapple pool raft and-a-and-a-and-a giant beach ball,” Frank recited.

Burt gasped, emerging from the other side of the desk with Frank’s hat in his hands.

“Oh, Frank you’re going to regret this,” he said, putting the hat on Frank’s head. Frank blinked a couple times.

"What the hell happened?" he asked.

"Your hat fell down,” Burt said, catching his breath.

"Oh no," Frank said and looked at the phone in his hands.

"You might have impulse purchased a couple of things," Burt said but Frank was already going through his phone frantically.

"Shit, shit, shit," he said.

"I'm sure you can cancel,"

"I maxed out my card!" Frank gasped.

"Just return it,"

"Yeah but… oh man,” Frank dropped into his chair, “you got any cash I on you?"

Burt sighed and pulled out his wallet slowly.

***

Van Hoofer had been busy all morning sitting in the buzzmachine override bunker. 

“What are you doing, boss?” Mike asked. He usually wouldn’t be asking a higher ranking officer a question like that, but they’ve worked with each other for what seemed like an eternity.

“Oh, I’ll just put in some nice things, like “do the right thing” or “be nice to your neighbor,” you know, make the world a little better, you know, that kind of thing,”

“Oh. I always thought you were a psychopath.”

“Don’t tell anyone, but that was all an act,”

“What if someone finds out?”

There was a thud on the door. Not a knock. A thud. They looked at each other. The door flew open and an armed squad trickled into the room. 

“On the ground!” the commander yelled. 

“Who the hell are you? Do you know who we are?” Van Hoffer yelled back at him. No one responded. They handcuffed Mike and Van Hoofer and put all the electronics into black bags. 

***

When Mike woke up, his whole body ached and he couldn’t move. He had been restrained with thick metal chains. He coughed and looked around. Van Hoffer was chained to the wall next to him. He was already awake. The room was tall and decorated with halloween ornaments. A man in a dark red gown, with red glowing eyes and fake horns stood in the middle of the room. It appeared like he had been arguing with Van Hoffer for some time.

"You have offended the almighty devourer!" he yelled in a high pitched voice, "he who creates all things through the ho-ly! INDUstreeeeee!”

"Oh. Well, if he's so almighty, he should create things out of thin air," Van Hoffer said and shrugged, making his chains rattle.

"Aaaaaargh! How dare you point out one of the almighty's softer spots!" 

"Hah! I guess, you're not worshipping God per se," Van Hoffer replied.

"Well, not per se" the horned figure shrugged.

"I bet you got those glowing eyes off of Abozon," he continued.

"They were indeed very reasonably priced," the figure said indifferently, examining his claws. It seemed like he had lost his drive. 

"So what is this circus? What are you all doing here? Tell me," Van Hoffer said to him.

"There are forces at play you couldn't possibly comprehend!" The horned clawed figure yelled with renewed zest.

“Tell me, who is your god? What is it that you call God?”

“He is the almighty devourer, the swallower, the epicenter of the world. The one and the only one aaaaaaand …. The superproducer, the inventor of the two-in-one and five-in-one and all-in-one. The everything shop, the factory of all things, the ultra shopping experience and… well…” the creature ran out of breath. 

“It seems like this being you serve has some sort of a god complex,” Van Hoffer said.

“Yes, I sense a lot of insecurity,” Mike said. 

“Trying to pretend he’s someone he’s not,” Van Hoffer tempted the fake demon.

“Yeah, he’s not a true God is he?” Mike said.

“How DARE you! I will rip out your innards for this atrocious blasphemy!” the horned man yelled at them.

“I mean the store is not spawning things out of thin air is it?” Van Hoffer wondered.

“Yeah, you need a lot of minimum wage workers, production lines, factories, slave labor,” Mike said.

“It sounds like you’re trying to imitate the one who is the source of ten thousand things,” Van Hoffer concluded. The horned man reached for an iron pitchfork and laughed. 

There was a thud at the wooden, fake aged, layer painted door. Another thud! and the plastic doorknob fell off and plonked on the ground. The horned figure froze, tilting its head to the side.

“What the heck?” he said. The door exploded. Men in military uniforms ran into the room. Mike recognized one of them. They threw the horned man on the ground and without any reservations.  

“We’ve come for you boss,” one of the soldiers said. Van Hoffer sighed.

“Thank God,” he said. 

***

Mike stood next to Rogers, watching the tower from a safe distance. He will probably get fired, but he didn’t care anymore. 

“Let’s put them on,” Rogers said and nudged him. They carefully put on their ear mufflers, safety helmets and goggles. The technicians were finishing laying out the wires. Finally all of the men gathered behind a solid slab of concrete. 

“Fire in the hole!” one of them yelled and the tower blew up, catapulting the white ceramic ring high up into the air. It slowed down, stopped mid-air and fell down, shattering into a thousand little pieces. 

“Cool,” Mike murmured.

“Now what?” Rogers asked.

“Now the world will go back to being a beautiful, quiet, peaceful place,” Mike said.

“Yeah right,” Rogers laughed.

“Heh. Yeah no, but… maybe someday."

“Maybe someday."