Ronald Redux

RONALD REDUX

           Not everyone was surprised when Ronald Copely came back from the dead.

           Most people were, of course; not that they would ever admit it. This was Portland after all, a city in which the surreal had a substantial investment, the returns on which could manifest in any number of venues, from the quietly quirky, such as folks over the age of 60, to the merely macabre, such as subsidized housing, to the incontestably bizarre, which encompassed -at least for anyone paying attention- everything else. 

Ronald Copely’s reappearance a week after his death fell somewhere in the middle. The news that he was not nearly as dead as was claimed by several witnesses to his burial caused a ripple of cautious comment within the social media. As the news of Ronald’s rising spread, everyone attempted to ascertain whether or not they were the only ones who hadn’t seen it coming.

 Which of course, they had; I mean, you’d have to be totally oblivious to the general gestalt not to regard Ron’s resurrection as anything other than the natural consequence of certain social innovations. There were, for example, recent Supreme Court rulings which had expanded the definition of people to include multinational corporations.  Clearly, giving such newly minted people pre-emptive voting rights and permission to engage in adverse conjugal relations with normal people had allowed the economy to grow from a public nuisance into maturity as planetary devastation.  Obviously, the indiscriminate bestowal of peoplehood upon such soulless entities almost guaranteed that the logical next step in social devolution would be the return of the actually dead.  

Therefore, Ronald’s rising like a bedraggled phoenix was evidence that by creating zombies out of the people killed in the pandemic, the economy was being reset. Since obviously nothing could scare the dead to death, they would be impervious to warning labels, nutrition facts, and other impediments to commerce. Looming environmental catastrophe would be of no relevance to them, so they would form the bulwark of the next generation of consumers.

The only problem with this particular message was the messenger. Ronald Copely was no one’s idea of a herald of the new world order. A zombie herald would at least have some prior celebrity with which to usher in the dawn of the dead. But apart from his birthdate and death date not much could be said about Ronald Copely other than to acknowledge that he had, like some indeterminate principle, been there, and that would have to suffice as long as no one dwelt at length on what, in his case, constituted ‘being’ or ‘there’.

Which is why his resurrection caught even the most practiced Portlander a little off guard. You simply didn’t expect a non-entity like Ronald Copely to turn up in the first wave of the zombie apocalypse. He kind of cheapened the whole concept and left many to wonder what the whole point was, anyway, if all the zombies were going to be like Ronald, and hence go unnoticed. It just seemed that if you had to adjust your life and social calendar to accommodate the horrific rising of the vengeful dead, you naturally expected its vanguard to be a little more compelling than Ronald Copely.  Really, the most that could be said about Ronald was that his succumbing to the recent pandemic had constituted one of its more neutral consequences.

 The subtle social dissonance occasioned by Ronald’s reappearance was first experienced at his former and, apparently, current workplace.  This was in one of the tech support sections of a software behemoth that had been churned up in the wave of acquisitions that had roiled the economy in the wake of the pandemic. The mishmash of corporate identities that resulted had coalesced under a slightly sinister logo featuring a squinting albeit unblinking eye over which was emblazoned the company name, Unohu, which for some reason people were reluctant to say out loud.    Unohu’s corporate mission was to render hopelessly irrelevant any kind of social or personal function that didn’t require its services. It’s mission statement put it plainly: “You’ll need us. So there. Live with it.”  Unohu ensured that no human would ever again have to ponder the purpose of humanity by making it clear that now that there wasn’t one. By supplying the world with computer software designed to eliminate any meaningful distinction between the actual and the artificial, Unohu was the ideal catalytic converter for spontaneous resurrection.

Andrea was among those who weren’t particularly surprised to find Ronald returned, as his demise had promoted her into his former position as director of Human Resources.  Finding him back and occupying her chair reflexively confirmed her suspicion that her promotion had been a company PR ploy intended to deflect accusations of racial and sexual bias.  It figured, she figured, that as soon as everyone’s back was turned, she’d be replaced by a dead white man.

Andrea after all was a hard-headed realist who was nobody’s fool and took a no-nonsense approach to life, an attitude that really didn’t work in Portland, so she’d eventually followed the advice of practically everyone she’d ever met and gotten over herself. She had learned to make room for such nonsense as Portland seemed to require, which up until now had been mostly confined to training others on how to have soothing pre-scripted phone conversations with overwrought new owners of a Unohu product. These conversations were designed to help complaining customers navigate their way down a tangled maze of technological rabbit-holes until they got stuck in a never-ending vortex and, hopefully, died. Ron’s return not only required an abrupt elevation of her nonsense tolerance but brought with it the frightening realization that if he was a harbinger of things to come, death would not necessarily be the last word in customer relations.       

Andrea paused at the entrance to her new office, did a double take, muttered “Hey, Ron,” and backed out quickly when he raised a pallid white hand in silent acknowledgment. She stood uncertainly in the aisle as her co-workers surged around her, silently wondering whether she should be the one to open debate on the subject.  Howard, her newly appointed assistant, passed by, glanced into the office, and continued quickly on his way lest he be subjected to more existential angst than was already demanded by a life still lived with his parents.

Arthur bumped into Andrea as she stood irresolute outside the office door, and while he was quietly appreciating the bump, especially those parts of Andrea that had participated in it, he noticed her fixed gaze on the figure seated at her console. He looked, swallowed once, hard, and waited for his mind to coalesce around a far more reasonable interpretation of current events than one limited by his ability to see only what was in front of him. Finding none, Arthur seized upon the one element of the situation for which a lifetime of insufficiently sublimated sexual predation had prepared him. Placing a comforting arm well around Andrea’s waist he quickly and quietly ushered her into the safety of his own cubicle.

  Andrea quickly and not so quietly repositioned his arm about halfway up his back and frog-marched him down to the canteen, where updates on the previous night’s revelries were being one-upped by whosever turn it was to speak. She parked him next to the water cooler and gave him a look which daily practice had refined to Medusa-like intensity. Arthur obediently turned to stone.

“Ron’s back,” Andrea announced by way of introduction once the canteen conversation had dribbled off into inconsequential trivialities, which would hopefully provide the proper Portlandic context in which to assess and integrate the living dead.

Someone asked the obvious question. “Who?”

“Ron. Copely,” answered Andrea, staring at a point somewhere beyond the wall in front of her.

“Uh – dead Ron Copely?”

“You know any other kind?” snapped Andrea.

“Whoa, steady on,” a sympathetic voice said maliciously. “Sounds like you had a…an interesting night last night, eh, Anj? What, your therapist over-prescribes the psilocybin?”

Andrea gave Arthur a hard look and startled him out of his paralysis. “She’s right, he’s back – Ron, I mean,” he blurted, belatedly hoping that his voice conveyed the studied ennui he assumed was necessary in order to have this discussion and still be in Portland. “He’s back, all right, over there in his – uh - Andrea’s office.”

“I didn’t say it was my office,” Andrea asserted hotly. “I just work there, y’know, and only since last week.”

“Since Ron died, you mean,” observed another specialist.

“I know what I meant!” snarled Andrea. “I’m just saying, I don’t have any particular attachment to that space, okay?  I mean, how pathetic is that y’know, to self-identify with a particular piece of corporate real estate, I mean, god!”

This occasioned a rapid round-robin of group analysis to determine to what extent anyone’s selfhood was currently in thrall to office space. Eventually it was established to everyone’s dissatisfaction that none of them were, except of course the ones who denied it.

 While waiting for entropy to wear down the conversation, a few of the group singly drifted down to not-Andrea’s office and casually glanced in. They returned to the group with their glances assuming a shiny and somewhat fixed expression.

“Well, uh… is nobody going to say it?” allowed Rupert eventually, “I mean, yeah, sure, Ron’s dead and all, but y’know, what the hay, can’t keep a good man down, eh?”

After a quiet evaluation of this sentiment, the group thoughtfully gave Rupert a few moments in which to shrink into his pockets and slink away. Then a secretary who had the thankless task of assigning workspace to thankless people suddenly realized that her job had just become several degrees more thankless.   

“So, what’s Ron doing back in this uh – unclaimed office, then?” she wondered. “Wasn’t he supposed to have died, or something like that?”

“I guess you’d definitely have to say, something like that,” admitted Arthur. “Or maybe not,” he added hastily, before someone’s look could accuse him of being cadaver intolerant.

           “What’ya think, Anj, this look like a human resources thing?” asked the secretary.

“Not sure that human resources are what’s needed here,” observed another. “Off hand, I’d say we’re kind of operating in a post-humanity thing - not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he emphasized.  

This took some digesting, during which time the proximate cause of their mutual near-death experience came lumbering up and extended a chipped coffee mug in a dead white hand.

“Java left?” mumbled Ron in the same voice he’d always employed when alive. After a brief moment to allow several pairs of eyes to randomly relocate to neutral corners, Alex proffered the near-empty pot.

“Just the dregs,” he murmured, and for some reason really wished he hadn’t said that.

Ron shrugged. “Take what I can get,” he grunted and emptied the pot’s contents.

What does THAT mean? Several internal voices united in borderline hysteria demanded. Take? GET? Get who? For goddsakes someone take charge here!

Andrea took charge. It was high time the past and present had it out to see who had first claim on the future. “So, Ron,” she began. “You…uh…uh…comfortable, uh, being, y’know… you right now?”

Ron stared blankly at her. “Not complainin’,” he muttered.

Andrea took a deep breath. “Only reason I ask, is, uh, is cause like there might be some, uh, issues, see, like, y’know, territorial kinds of things, you being here and being… you and all.”

Ron didn’t blink, if only perhaps because he couldn’t. “Territorial?” he wondered. “Not sure what you’re getting at, Andy.”

Andrea steadied herself, “Well, I dunno if since you came back – got back - if you’ve had a chance to check out Margaret’s latest memo on office realignments,” she said, gesturing at the secretary in charge of putting people in places. “But the fact is, I’m where you are – were –are - right now, uh, that is to say, your office is now my office, so…so…you have any objection, which is fine by me, y’know, but there’s these protocols, I think, so anyway you might want to..to.. take it up with Margaret, ‘cause of…of…protocols and shit, y’know?” I see this on any Instagram shit and Copely ain’t the only one who’s dead around here! Andrea thought fiercely as she dribbled to a close while studiously avoiding Margaret’s venomous look.

Ron raised dead blank eyes at Andrea. “Didn’t get the memo,” he said tonelessly.

Oh great. He doesn’t even have a tone, griped Andrea to herself. She flared meaningful eyes at Margaret, who swallowed back a shriek. “Well, um, sorry and all about the memo, uh, Ron,” Margaret said gamely. “But it did go through channels, same as always, y’know, but I guess it didn’t reach – reach – much beyond here, see, so maybe it didn’t get…beyond…over to where you …weren’t …anymore.” 

 Ron appeared to ponder, much like a corpse would ponder if it ever came to that. “So, why you saying I didn’t get the memo?” he asked in a suspiciously neutral voice.

It was at this point that Howard stepped forward. Howard had spent the preceding five minutes of social disorientation grappling with the sinister implications of Ron’s resurrection, namely that, contrary to their darkly repeated assurances, Howard might never get the chance to miss his parents once they were finally gone.  The stark horror of that possibility propelled him forward.

“Now – now – see here, Ron – may I call you Ron?” he gabbled. “What – what Andrea means is, uh, well, man, damn it all, you’re dead, and – and that’s gotta count for something, now, doesn’t it? I mean, right? Unless of course…” he trailed off, as another unwelcome thought took hold. “Uh…you do know that you’re dead, don’t you? I mean - I mean – you got that memo, didn’t you?”

Ron’s eyes, the only ones in the room not bright with terrified nonchalance, stared blankly at Howard. “Think I wouldn’t know if I was dead, Howie?” he rumbled in the same eerie tone of perfect normalcy that had darkened his earlier comments.

Howard swallowed. “W-well, I just don’t want to be making any assumptions, here, okay? I mean, hah hah, hell, I’d probably be the last one to notice I died, but that’s just me, see, so probably you were, uh, a bit more observant, that is to say, you were probably right on top of the situation, right? I mean, that’d be just like you, wouldn’t it, guys, I mean, it’s like we all always used to say, uh, when we said it, which was…uh, I mean, hey, that Ron Copely, he’s on top of it, isn’t that like what we always used to say, g-guys? Guys?”

The guys stared at him so uncomprehendingly that Howard was forced to blunder on. “So, when you – ch-checked out, I guess maybe you had a back-up plan in place, so if things didn’t work out, uh, after-life wise, you had something to fall back on, am I right?” he concluded in a desperate sweat of good-natured bonhomie.

Ron appeared to take this in while fastening his unblinking gaze on Howard like a missile seeking heat. “Well, I guess I do have a backup plan, now that you mention it.” Howie blanched and tried to coax his knees into a more supportive posture than the fetal position to which they were now inclined. “Y’see, while you guys were all about ignoring me, other folks were paying attention. They saw my potential. My death was just the next step.”

“N-n-next step?” Howard stammered.

Ron turned to face Andrea, who stood with her back to the figurative wall, which was about the only thing keeping her upright. “The desk is yours, Andy,” he said in a voice that would have been reassuring had circumstances not rendered that impossible. “I won’t be needing it where I’m going.”

Andrea blinked away some of her shellshock. “ Uh – leaving us already? Again?” she said.

“Leaving?” Ron seemed almost puzzled. “No, I’ll still be around.”

 Only news of impending nuclear holocaust would have rendered that news second most unwelcome. Andrea stared. “Around?”

Ron nodded. “Upstairs. I’ve been promoted to top management. Didn’t you get the memo?”

Andrea felt her nonsense quota slipping past recall. “N-no, I guess I missed that one.”

Ron nodded solemnly. “Part of the new company HR policy.  All personnel to be recruited from the past generation. It’ll ensure continuity and save a bundle.  We’ll be able to eliminate the employee lounge, cafeteria, and other timewasters, for instance.” Ron paused to let his head loll slowly around to take in the group now frozen in place, then reached out his coffee mug and emptied its contents back into the pot. “Why eat or drink when you don’t have to?” he added meaningfully.

 Inevitably, the news of Ron’s posthumous promotion to the head office would eventually be seen as a tribute to Unohu’s foresight: by recruiting the next generation of employees directly from the deceased, the blind march of progress could proceed unimpeded by the concerns of the living. This being Portland, of course, you also had to admire the rich irony involved when some of the direct results of nihilistic social practice suddenly popped back post-eulogy, instead of staying quietly hidden in, say, the ground, or in third-world countries or in subsequent decades. For those who felt that people coming back from the grave were the sociological equivalent of a sewer backing up and depositing the remembrance of things past all over everyone’s comfort zones, there was a saying: if you can’t stand the heat, you have very little say in the matter. In any case, you can’t live in Portland if you’re not able to accept spontaneous resurrection as an inevitable consequence of contemporary cultural norms. So there. Live with it.