All the World's a Stage, Chapter 7

   The stream is out. “The Future” is finally out for all to enjoy, all fifty people who were around when I ended it a four o’clock. On unfortunate fact about normalcy, I have to end before my neighbor’s show up. 

   As soon as I finish, I check my email, hoping for responses to my many job application. So far, I’ve had two requests for an interview, one from an office in Seattle, one from the grocery store. I interviewed for both, though I haven’t heard anything back. There aren’t any requests for interview in my inbox, but there is an email from Nina. I forgot I gave her my personal email back when she first joined. 

    I open the email. It reads, “Hey Ellen, How’s life? Thing’s have been crazy since you left. It got so bad we all decided to give the boss what for, and when he kept pushing us, we all quit within a week. Lucy apparently has another job lined up already, but Maryann and I didn’t. We were wondering if you had any luck so far. As for non-work-related things, how would you like to hang out sometime? We’ve all missed having you around. Sincerely, Nina Cravitz”

    I reply, “Hey Nina, no luck with job searching so far. I got a couple of interviews but haven’t gotten any further than that. It’s alright though, I’ve been using my free time to relax and recuperate from the crazy year we’ve had. Hopefully I’ll get something soon. I’d love to hang out with you guys if I get the chance. Thank you, Ellen Thompson.”

    I look over it before I send it. It’s not a bold-faced lie, but it feels pretty close to it. I’m trying to stretch my money out, but between rent and student loans it’s going to be tight. I should probably apply for unemployment, but I don’t know if I’ll qualify, since I doubt the state considers “invested in crypto” to be a good enough reason to quit. I could ask my parents for money for food at least. Or maybe I could pawn some of my things.

   I look over the responses to my stream. Surprisingly, most people seem to like my music. I know only a few people listen, but since I’ve had no formal training, I was sure I’d suck at it. At least one person wants to know when “The Future” will be officially released. I don’t know, but soon, I hope. 

   I don’t see anyone wanting to financially support me. It’s alright. I’m struggling, but it’s not dire like it is for many other people right now. 

   I consider looking at Julius Corvin’s YouTube page again, then stop him. I bought all the music from him I’m ever going to listen to, all I’ll be doing is increasing his ad revenue. Even if he’s renounced NFTs, which deep down I suspect he hasn’t, I’ll never again be convinced he’s a good person. 

   That’s one good thing about not being famous. No matter what I do, there’s a limit to the amount of people I can disappoint. 

   I check my email again and notice that Nina’s already replied. I wonder if she’s at her computer for the same reason I am. I open the email, which says, “I looked you up online to find you on social media. I didn’t know you sang. It’s a bit rough, but it could be improve with practice. I have a friend who helps people learn music. Email me and I’ll give you his contact info.”

   I think for a bit. I would love to get better at singing, but if I’m honest I’m growing to love writing lyrics and music more. At first I only wrote music so I wouldn’t get flagged by YouTube for copyright infringement, but then overtime I started to feel more comfortable expressing myself. I write back, “I’d love to get better, but money’s a bit tight at the moment. Glad to hear you like it though. Want to friend each other on Facebook?” 

    After I send it off, I refresh the web page in the hopes something shows up. Nothing still. Whatever, something’s going to turn up soon, I’m sure of it. Or at least I’m telling myself I’m sure, so I don’t freak out. To aid in the effort to not completely freak out, I go online to look for anything I haven’t applied for yet. I send out a lot more. At least now, when I end up homeless, no one can say it was because I didn’t try. Just in case I refresh the page again, and there’s an email from the grocery store with the subject line reading, “Are you free to start tomorrow at 5pm?”. Well, night shifts suck, but at the moment I can’t complain. I email back saying “Yes. I’ll be there.” 

   I open my webcam again. It’s time to finish “The Future” for real. I don’t know if it’ll be my big success, the song that will finally enable me to stop worrying about money forever and do what I want with my life, I just know that it’s my favorite song. I also know that no matter how hard I end up having to work in my next job, I’ll never stop singing. If I keep belting out tunes, eventually somebody will listen to what I have to say. 

All the World's a Stage, Chapter 6

 Warning: Adult language

   Something I didn’t think about when I quit my job is that I now no longer have an excuse to avoid eating dinner with my parents. I know I should be excited, in the past I loved eating dinner with the rest of my family. We would talk about how our day was, and how excited we were for the upcoming Super Bowl or iPhone release. But then Covid hit, and we didn’t see each other for almost a year. Now that we’ve started seeing each other again, we can’t seem to find anything to talk about. My parents sometimes talk about work and what they want to do when they retire, and all I can think about is the fact that I will never be able to retire, even if I worked two jobs like a lot of people have to do these days. I know they don’t mean to upset me but eating in their house has become a painful reminder of the fact that they had it so much easier than I did. Or at least, so everyone says.

     “What do you think, Ellen?” 

     “Huh” I say to mom. She’s been talking to dad about something for a while now, and I’ve been too absorbed in my own thoughts to listen.

     “Do you think that once Covid passes and things go back to normal, you’d like to go on vacation with us?” Mom asks.

    I have to clamp my mouth shut to keep from laughing. Not at the idea of going on vacation with my parents, but at the idea that Covid is ever going to end, not to mention the ridiculous notion that we’ll ever be normal again. 

    “That might be nice.” I say.

     My parents start talking to each other again. I look down at my plate. Apparently, I managed to eat everything without even noticing what it was. I could blame my obsessive search for work, but I think the problem is I honestly wish I wasn’t here. I thought I did. When my mom invited me over, I said yes, but then when I came over dad said, “It’s good to know you’ve learned to put family before work at last.” I almost left right then. I should have left. I got enough of being stepped on by my boss, I don’t need it from my dad. 

     “I told him ‘I don’t need this job badly enough to work overtime for you. I have a family that needs me. You knew a month ago that we needed ten people in this department, and you didn’t take the steps to make sure we had enough people. I’m not working overtime; I don’t care if we can’t meet our deadlines, I’m not letting you take advantage of me.’ And then I left his office.”  Dad says.

    “What if they fire you? We have enough money trouble as it is.” Mom says, sounding like she’s about to cry.

   “Sweetheart,” Dad says, “They won’t fire me, the department would fall apart if they did. Even if they did fire me, I can walk away knowing I stuck to my guns and did what was right, not what somebody told me to do. If I worked overtime just to keep my job, I’d be compromising who I am, and every day I saw you or Lisa or Janine or Ellen, I’d remember that I let down the people who matter to me the most, the people in my life who truly need me.”

    He glances in my direction. I’m trying not to burst into tears. “Where’s Janine?” I ask, to change the subject.

     Mom sighs, “She had something come up at work and couldn’t make it. I told her it’s alright, she’s done plenty for us, help someone else for a change.”

     I try not to say, “Oh, so it’s alright if Janine shirks family dinner but not if I do it?” But I must look upset because mom says, “Ellen, she’s a lawyer. Lawyers never have a work life balance of any sort. Besides, she’s trying to earn enough to pay off her student loans, and she wants to save enough to open her own law firm. Compared to her, you have it easy. All you have to do is show up, do the work your boss gives you, and then collect a salary.”

      I can’t help it, the words, “Yeah, my life is totally sunshine and rainbows right now.” Come out of my mouth in the worst tone of voice. 

    My father glares at me and says, “I know you had to give up some of your alone time to be with us, but I would appreciate it if you made even a little bit of effort to be polite, especially since you haven’t shown up for dinner in almost six months.”

     “I showed up for Lisa’s birthday party.” I snap. Any desire I had to be civil to my father has gone out the window.

     “Do you really want credit for doing the minimum I would expect from you? I thought you knew better Ellen. I didn’t raise you to back out of responsibility because you didn’t feel like doing the work. We’re family Ellen. Family means that, from time to time, you do things you’d rather not do, and you haven’t been doing nearly enough. I expect better from you Ellen, and I’m deeply disappointed in you.”

    I look him in the eye. I swear, it’s not my father sitting next to me anymore, it’s my awful, cruel, selfish, entitled, monster of a boss, knowing I can’t possibly meet his expectations, but demanding I meet them anyway, and when I fail, demanding I do so much more because he knows I can’t possibly run away. I need his job. I need my family. Oh, heck with it, I didn’t need my job, and I’m sure I can get by just fine without my family to. 

     “Screw you. Screw you so hard. I don’t care if you ‘need me’. I don’t care if you’re life will fall apart if I’m not there, I’m tired of putting up with your nonsense. I’ve wanted, so badly to just throw it all away and come back here, but now I see that if I do that, I’ll just be trading one cage for another. You don’t care if I come to dinner or not, all you want is someone you can step on, someone so weak she’ll never say no, no matter how tired she gets. And spare me that ‘I’m disappointed in you’ garbage. I’ve done everything I can to make you two happy, and this is the thanks I get. Why do I even bother?” 

   I look up and everyone is staring at me. “Did I say that out loud?” I moan.

  “Yes.” Mom says.

  “And I want an apology right this language. We don’t use that kind of language in this house young lady.” Dad says.

    “Dad, you say things like that all the time when you think Mom isn’t listening.” Lisa says. She never quite learned when it’s best to keep your mouth shut. 

  “Okay, I’m sorry I used a bad word.” I say, with the smallest amount of sarcasm I can manage. 

  “That wasn’t a very good apology, Ellen” Mom says, sourly. “I know you’re busy, but your father’s right, you need to put family before everything else. Even work.”

    “Good thing I quit then.” I say.

    All the air goes out of the room. “You WHAT?!” My father says.

   “I quit my job. It was just me and three other women doing the work of twelve people, and the boss kept refusing to hire anyone. I had enough, so I quit.” I say.

   “Did you have a backup?” Mom says, her voice trembling.

   “No. Does it matter?” I say, even though I already know the answer. 

   “Yes it does.” Mom, says, slamming her hand on the table. “What if you can’t find one quickly, you know we can’t support you.” 

    Don’t I ever? “I’m sorry I upset you, mother, I just felt tired of working from six in the morning until eight at night for an idiot who couldn’t run his department properly. So I did what Dad would do in that situation, right dad?”

    “No, you are not right. You don’t quit a job without a back up plan. People in movies get away with that because they aren’t real people and the writers of the show wouldn’t let them starve, just whimper enough to get the audience to feel sorry for them. You don’t have that luxury, Ellen. If you don’t get a job fast enough, you’ll end up on the streets. Your mother and I can’t help you there.”

     “I’m not going to starve.” I say, with more confidence than I actually feel. “And I’m not going to let you guilt me for doing what’s right.” I say, standing up and grabbing my things.

    “Ellen, what are you doing?” Mom says.

    “I’m leaving.” I say.

   “We have dishes to do.” She says, annoyed.

   “I’ll do the dishes when I feel like I’m an actual member of this family again.” I say, stomping out of the house. 

    All the way home I keep playing the conversation. Half of me thinks I went to far, half of me thinks I didn’t go far enough. None of me is satisfied. For some reason, I keep thinking of the day Janine graduated from high school. Mom and dad were so happy. She’d worked hard and been rewarded with a perfect GPA and a scholarship to UW. Everyone kept saying she’d go far in life. Did she go far? She did get a bachelor’s and Master’s in law and landed a job at law firm, and she does plan on opening her own firm later on, but so many other people have done that, I don’t know that it’s all that special anymore. 

   Nobody expected me to go far. I worked hard, harder than Janine because I’m not nearly as smart as she is, but my grades weren’t as good. I didn’t get a scholarship, so I had to take out more student loans to get my bachelors, but at least I didn’t have to pursue a masters to get a job. I went through three jobs after college, she’s only had two, and I’m about to get another one. At least I will if I can find one.

    I’ve been applying to every job I can find. I even applied to Target. They won’t pay much, but maybe with my savings I’ll be able to survive. Or starve to death a little more slowly. Either way, it’ll buy me some time to look for a job where the pay is something I can hope to live on. 

    I arrive home at eight. The first thing I do is collapse on my bed and sob. Less than an hour ago I told my parents of, and now I already wish I hadn’t. I didn’t mean to get so snippy; I was just tired and frustrated with life. Everything about the past two years has been awful, and I can’t take it anymore. If this were the movie that I wish it was right now, a fairy godmother would come in and start a chain of events that would magically bring my family back together, get me the job I always wanted, and give me a nice house to live in instead of this awful apartment. 

    But this isn’t a movie, and soon I get up and open my laptop. I navigate to YouTube and see the video I posted about my stream. It’s coming up soon. I should be excited, but I haven’t taken nearly enough time to prepare for it. Not to mention my apartment isn’t set up for singing in, and I’m a little worried I’ll annoy my neighbors. Ah well, that’s why it’s scheduled for the middle of the day. 

   I wonder what Lisa’s posting about. I doubt she’s got a bigger following than I do. I open a new tab and type in “Lisa Thompson Tumblr” into the search bar. It takes me a while to find it, since there’s more than one Lisa Thompson out there and most of them are more famous than she is, but I finally find it, thanks to her using a picture of herself in her Tumblr avatar. 

    There are fewer posts than I was expecting, and by that, I mean there are about two posts a week rather than fifty posts a day. Most of them seem to be various iterations on the theme, “school is awful, and my parents are making me miserable.” Which, since she’s seventeen, is to be expected. Unfortunately, Tumblr doesn’t show followers directly, so I have to read through several of her posts before I get to one where she brags about having finally gotten to thirty followers. I don’t know if that’s true or not, given that it’s only thirty I suspect it is, but I’m still upset she got to double digits before I did. And that’s only on her Tumblr page, who knows how many people follow her on Facebook and Twitter. 

    I’m about to log off when the title of the post bellow that catches my eye. It says, “What can I do?”. I realize that, since it’s Lisa, it probably doesn’t say anything interesting, but I still read it anyway. The actual post says, “I remember being in elementary school, thinking I was the coolest person ever. I passed all my classes without trying. My parents kept telling me I needed to try harder and I though, ‘what for’ my sister’s spent all day locked up in their room trying to study and it didn’t make them happy, so why would I want to do that. Then middle school started. Suddenly I had to start studying. First, it was just for language arts. I know, who flunks language arts right? But at least with math if you suck people assume your just a normal person with a stupid brain. If you flunk LA, they know you’re dumb. But all throughout middle school aside from Language Arts and Geography a couple times, I passed my classes without too much hassle. The worst part about it all was the homework. I hate homework and teachers give way too much of it once you’re out of elementary school. It’s like they think you shouldn’t have a life, or at least as little of one as possible. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a secret order to kill us all and have us replaced with zombies. I was expecting high school to be the same way. And it was. Until Corona virus ruined everything. I was excited when school shut down at first, who doesn’t want to sit at home all day, right? But the longer it went on, the more I missed my friends, and homework just felt so much worse in high school than it had been in middle school. I still did okay at first, but the classes got harder, and they kept pushing more and more work on us, and now I feel like I’m about to snap.”

   “What am I supposed to do about it? My parents and sister’s keep going on and on about college, but I can’t keep up with high school, how on earth am I going to manage college? Should I just give up now and take a job at Target or, God forbid, McDonald’s? How am I going to make enough money to live on? Janine works eighty hours per week and has a master’s in law, and she still lives with roommates. Ellen’s been working full time since she finished college, and all she can manage is the crummy apartment an hour away from anywhere else. They work so much harder than I ever want to, and all it’s brought them is endless misery and crumbling drywall, yet they still won’t get off my back about working hard. I am working hard. I’ve got a zillion hours of homework every night, three clubs, community service, and I’m still somehow not ‘working hard’. Give me a break. I’ve been working hard for six years now, and I don’t want to work hard the rest of my life. I want to live on a beach somewhere and have someone bring me drinks in Coconuts. Not really, but that’s about as realistic as anything else at this point.”

    The post ends after that. Most of me can’t help but feel this is painfully amateurish. I know she’s still in high school, but don’t they teach you how to write at some point? The rest of me can’t help but think, “It’s high school. High school always sucks. Then you get out and go to college, and that’s a little better, then you get a job and it’s boring and slow but at least you earn enough to live on and do fun things, then you retire and die.” I know that isn’t true anymore, my most recent job proved that, but my parents hammered that into me so hard I still don’t want to accept it isn’t true.

     Honestly, if you were to clean this post up a bit and replace every mention of school with work, this could have been something I wrote. Heck, I could turn it into a YouTube video without changing a thing and it would still be mostly true. I remember telling Lisa on her birthday she wouldn’t be successful as a writer, or a social media influencer, and she should focus more on school. I still think that’s true, but these days it seems impossible to be successful at anything. The best any of us can seem to manage is to not die on the streets somewhere, and with Covid even that’s becoming tenuous. Put like that, maybe it’s not such a bad thing that she spends so much time online. If she’s going to end up failing anyway, why not fail at doing something she loves? It’s why I started a YouTube channel after all. 

    I pick up my phone and tap Lisa’s name in my contacts. I fully expect her to be busy, it is almost nine o’ clock after all, but she picks up instantly. “Hello,” She says, sounding annoyed. 

     “Hey Lisa,” I say, “I was just calling to say I’m sorry for what I said on your birthday.”

      “What, have you changed your mind about me being successful as an online personality?” she says. I can’t tell from her tone of voice whether she’s hoping I’ll say yes or certain I’ll say no.

     “No, I don’t you’ll be successful. Frankly, unless you somehow inherit money from Bill Gates, I don’t think there’s any way you can be successful in this day and age.” I say.

     “Well, there’s always NFTs.” She says, brightly.

     “Even if it were the only way for me to have enough money to live, I’d never get involved in NFTs. They leave a stench so foul people avoid you even if you’re famous. Just look at Julius Corvin.”

    “That old washed-up has been you used to listen to? Isn’t he, like, dead now?”

    “Unfortunately, no.” I say, “And also, even if he’s not in his prime, he’s still more successful than you or I ever will be, no matter how much we pray to the gods that we’ll rise to the top and topple him.”

   “Well, I might. You don’t have any social media presence.” Lisa says.

    “Lisa, everyone has a presence on social media these days. Even mom has a Facebook account, and when the pandemic forced me to work from home, I started a YouTube channel.”

    “Really? What do you do, vlog about how your job sucks?” Lisa says.

    “No, I write and perform music.” I say.

    “Is it any good?” Lisa says. 

    “Probably not,” I reply, “It’s just nice to have an outlet from the stress of work.” 

    “I know, right.” She says, laughing. “Hey, Ellen,” She says, sounding really somber all of a sudden, “Do you ever, like, think about what it’s like to be really famous?”

    “Everyone does.” I reply, “We all know we won’t be, but we all want a taste of what it’s like to have tons of people who all like us, no matter how stupid we are.”

    “I know, but, what if you don’t want to be famous?” She asks.

    “What do you mean?”

   “Like, you put a lot of time into your online life because you want people to see you and praise you and talk about how you’re actually a really good person who just isn’t appreciated by this stupid world, but you keep wondering if you’ll do something stupid and everyone will see it and laugh at you and tell you you’re a dumbass. And you know you’re not that dumb, but you still kind of think you could be, so you try to hide that part of you, and then you realize that means that people don’t know the real you anyway, so you just feel stupid.”

   I pause to try and work through what she just said. “So let me get this straight.” I say, “You’re worried you could become famous for doing something stupid, and you’re so worried about that that you feel like you have to hide who you are online?” 

    “Yeah, something like that.” She says.

    I think for a bit, then say, “Lisa, nobody shows their true self online. Everyone knows that if they post something stupid or vulgar, it could cost them everything. And even if you did do something stupid online, there’s so much stupid stuff made by people who are way stupider than you that I don’t think anyone would care.”

   “You’re right. I mean, I know that. But part of me just looks at all the people who got famous and thinks, ‘do they ever wish they could go back to normal?’ I know a lot of them wanted to be famous, but some of them became famous because they’re parents forced them to be famous, and now they can’t be unfamous no matter how hard they try.”

    I don’t think ‘unfamous’ is a word, but I don’t think she’d care. Teenagers live to make up dumb words. “Lisa, this is the internet. If someone isn’t working constantly to keep somebody’s attention, their audience will forget about them and move onto something else.”

    “I guess you’re right.” Lisa says, sounding doubtful. In the background, I hear mom yelling at her to get off the phone. “Gotta go, it’s late and I still haven’t finished my homework.” 

   “Okay, bye Lisa.”

  “Bye, Ellen.”

  I hang up. I play our conversation in my head. I meant what I said about people on the internet forgetting you if you don’t pay attention to them, but is that actually true? I read somewhere about the first person who was conceived via in-vitro fertilization. She talked about how she’d gotten used to being in the spotlight all her life. There are a lot of child actors who never act anymore, and they still get thousands of twitter followers. Did the guy who made the “Numa-Numa” video ever manage to move past that? It’s doubtless the first thing that shows up whenever prospective employees google him. 

   I guess that once you become famous, it’s hard to go back from that. Even if you never do anything the rest of your life, you still have those weirdos who know you because you were involved with something they loved and/or hated more than anything else, and that follows you everywhere. I know I run a YouTube channel, one that I made with the sole goal of becoming famous enough to never have to work a day in my life ever again, because I’d be able to sing for a living instead. But now I wonder if I really want to be famous. I love singing, I don’t want to give that up, but I don’t know if I want everything that goes with being famous. 

   Then again, it’s not like it matters. Julius Corvin didn’t get famous by singing, he got famous by convincing someone with money and connections to bankroll him into stardom. I have neither the talent nor the connections for that, hence my single digit subscriber count, and there’s so much better music on YouTube I’m sure I’ll be safely ignored for the rest of my days. And in a way, I can still be famous, just famous among such a small group of fans that the chance of my actually meeting any of them in public is astronomically small. 

   You know, I wonder how many creators became famous just looking for that small group of fans who loved them and only them? Did anyone really start out hoping for fame, or was fame just a “happy” accident? 

All the World's a Stage, Chapter 5

     I can’t keep my eyes open, but I’m so on edge I don’t want to drink any coffee. The moment I walked in the door my boss started in on me for being unable to keep up with work. I swear I finished everything yesterday, but there was so much stuff on my desk that apparently should have been done ages ago, and I honestly can’t remember if I needed to do it or not. 

     I keep trying to work, only to have numbers disappear from my mind. Is this what it feels like when you’re developing Alzheimer? Or I’m I just too tired to be here?

    I want to work. I never wanted to be one of those people who leeches off of their parents until their parents die, then pretends they aren’t dead so they can continue to collect social security. But my “I want to quit sticky not is completely filled with marks” and I don’t know if that’s because I didn’t replace it this morning, or because I just thought that a thousand times in the two hours I’ve been here. 

    If there weren’t so much work, I’d hide in a bathroom stall and cry. This is just too much for me to manage. It would have been too much two years ago, now it just feels like the world is crushing me. 

   I walk over to the water cooler. I just can’t face work right now. I pick up a cup, fill it, then just stare at the wall. Lucy walks over to me and says, “Shouldn’t you be working right now?”

    I’m not in the mood for this. “Shouldn’t you?” I growl.

    She sighs and says, “Well at least we should have more people soon.” She says.

    “Who told you that? A time share salesman?”

     “No. One of my friends in another department said that the owner is planning on making some investments that will allow the company to grow.”

    “What sort of investments?” I ask.

     “I’m not sure.” Lucy replies. “I think it was something to do with blockchains.” 

      I gulp down my water and toss my cup in the trash. I walk to my boss’ office and bang on the door. He opens it and says, “What is it, Ellen?”

   “There’s something I need to ask you.” I say.

   “Can it wait?” He says.

   I think for a bit, then I reply, “No.”

  He leads me into his office. Apparently once you’re a manager, you no longer have to stay in an enclosed room with no windows. Outside, I can see people going about their day. “What is it?” my boss asks.

     “Is it true that the owner is planning on getting involved in cryptocurrency?” I ask.

     “What does this have to do with your job?” He asks, annoyed.

     “Just tell me.” I say.

     He sighs and says, “You have to promise not to tell anyone I told you this, but yes, he is planning on branching out into investments involving the blockchain. I’m told he feels that the only way for the company to grow is if we branch out and do more in the metaverse.”

     I’m stunned. I don’t know why. Every other company on the planet is run by scum, so I don’t see why the one I’m working at would be any different. But I can’t help but feel so angry and betrayed right now. 

   I don’t even think about it, I just say, “I quit.”

   My boss looks at me in confusion, “Pardon?” He says.

  “I said I quit.” I tell him.

  He leans over and looks me in the eye, “Why? Is something the matter Ellen?”

  I want to tell him that everything is wrong. I want to tell him that I’ve wanted to quit almost since I started this job, but with the pandemic and my student loans I didn’t want to take the chance. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Not because I’m worried about being blacklisted, at the moment I don’t care, but because I know that yelling at my boss won’t change anything.

   “I’ve been debating it for some time, learning we were going to be involved in cryptocurrency was what pushed me over the edge.” I say.

   “Ellen, I’m sure you have good reasons for feeling the way you do, but right now I can’t afford to lose another employee. We’re already way behind, and if I tell my boss we’re missing this next deadline, I could lose my job. I know you’re angry, but you can’t just leave me and the rest of the team like this. We need you, Ellen. If you leave, you’re going to let us down.”

   Oh, how I wish I was in one of those movies where the protagonist can respond to his awful boss by flipping over his desk and flipping him the bird. Alas, I can’t get away with that here. If I flip out like I badly, badly want to, I will only make things worse. 

    “None of that is my concern sir. If you wanted to meet this deadline, you wouldn’t have tried to make four people do the work of twelve, or at least you would have stayed late as often as you seem to expect me to. We’ve been carrying your job for at least six months now, and at this point starvation is the only thing keeping us stuck here. I’ve had enough. All of us have had enough. I know you’re worried about your job, but if I were you, I’d accept the fact that me staying or leaving wouldn’t change the fact that you’re done.”

     I stand up and leave before he can respond. I said to much. I know that. But it still feels so good to tell him what I’ve been thinking for months now. I grab a box and start packing my things up. “What happened?” Mary Ann asks from her cubicle, “Did he fire you?”

    I can’t help but laugh. “He couldn’t fire me if I took off all of my clothes and started dancing on his desk. I quit.” 

   “Why?” Nina asks. The look on her face is one of sadness and despair.

   “I’ve wanted to for a while now. I just took the plunge.”

   “You know you could have demanded a raise.” Lucy says.

     I look over at her. “No amount of money is large enough to make up for what this job has taken from me.”

    I grab my things and walk out, filled with both joy and dread. I don’t have another job lined up. All my life my parents told me to never quit without having another job lined up. I try telling myself it’s not that bad, with so many people quitting these days I can easily find a job that will allow me to stay afloat, but in the back of my head a loud voice keeps screaming, “You’re doomed.” 

     I try not to think about anything on my way home. I walk inside and realize it’s been so long since I’ve been at home before nine at night that there isn’t any food in my apartment. Fortunately, there’s a grocery store not too far away from the house. I check my bank account to see how much food I can buy, then I realize just how big of a mistake I just made. 

    If it were just rent that I needed to worry about, I’d be fine. But there’s also my student loans, food, water payments, and other stuff I can’t remember right now. I’ve been saving all the money I can, but I still only have enough to make it maybe a month, and only if I’m very lucky. 

    I open up my laptop to look for any job I can find, and then the fatigue hits. I’ve been running on adrenaline, and without the constant worry about meeting demands at my job, I can’t keep it going. Then I start feeling sick to my stomach. I suddenly realize I’m not sure if I ate breakfast. I frequently skip it if I’m working because I eat lunch out. I need food, and more importantly, a day off.

    The stores a mile away, so I decide to walk instead of drive. I don’t want to waste money on gas until I know I have another job. Since it’s the middle of the day, the stores not very busy. I try to be careful, but between hunger and exhaustion I spend too much money on chips and soda and not enough on actual food, something I regret on my walk home. 

   I was planning on going to sleep, but with caffeine I’m awake enough to begin searching for a job. I send out thirty applications by six that night. When I’m done, I feel proud, but then an unwelcome thought enters my mind; How do I know if my new job will be any better than the one I just left?

   I try to distract myself with YouTube. I notice I’ve lost two subscribers since I checked last. I feel deflated, but since I haven’t posted anything for three months, I shouldn’t be surprised. I turn on my webcam and say, “Hey guys, sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while. Work’s been crazy. I haven’t left the office before eight since last September. I just quit this morning, so hopefully I’ll have more time to work on videos now, so that’s good. Hope you’ve been having a good time. Don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.”

   I click the off button. I should probably edit it, but I’m sure the video’s good enough as is. A good thing about having a single digit subscriber count is that you don’t need to care if your videos are good or bad, all that matters is that you have fun making them. One nice thing about not having a job anymore is that I can put more work into YouTube. I confess, I’ve missed it. 

   Out of curiosity I navigate to Julius Corvin’s YouTube channel. I know I’ve denounced him, but part of me still likes playing “Memories” when I feel sad about something. 

    Nothing seems to have changed since the last time I was here. There aren’t any new uploads, and the community tab is full of him bragging about how successful he is. I don’t know why I was expecting something to be different. Nobody seems to be angry at him for getting involved with NFTs. 

    I click away. I need to stop pretending he’ll change. He was once a big part of my life, but now he has well and truly lost touch with the people responsible for keeping him alive. He’s a lot like my boss. They’re both people whose existence depends on others sacrificing themselves for their benefit, but they’re unwilling to do anything to make that sacrifice worthwhile. 

    I go back to my YouTube channel. I love singing, I’ve done it in some way ever since I was in choir in middle school. When I was in high school, I dreamed of being a famous singer, before my father told me that was stupid. I still kind of want to be a famous singer, or at least to make enough money singing that I don’t have to work in an office anymore, but I will never be like Julius Corvin. I will let my moral compass guide me, not whatever makes me money. 

    Maybe I could be a famous singer. In this day and age, all it takes is a camera and a decent microphone to become famous. I have no plans; I could write all the songs I want and post them all to YouTube. Maybe somebody will notice me and make me a star. Or maybe I’ll get evicted from my apartment when I can’t pay rent. 

    I open the file for “The future”, my first big hit. I just need to polish it, then it’ll be ready to release. But I don’t want it to be a small release, I want to make it clear to the world that this is the next big thing, that this will take the internet by storm the way all great music does. I know, I’ll do a stream of me performing all my songs, and at the end I’ll reveal “The Future”, it’ll be a great way to both grab attention and celebrate me quitting my job. I open my webcam again and say, “Great news guys, I’m doing a stream at the end of the month. I’ll be performing all my songs live, and at the end I’ll have a new song to show you. Hope you’re free to see it.” I stop the video and save it for later. If I’m working on revealing a legend, I want to make sure the video is properly edited this time. 

All the World's a Stage, Chapter 4

    The apartments a mess. I keep meaning to clean it, but between work and family obligations, I can never find the time to do so. I try to focus on work, but I keep being distracted by a pile of old CDs in the corner.

    The CDs are from when I was younger. My parents were old fashioned, so when I asked for music for my birthdays, they’d always give it to me on a CD. That way, I’d always have it even if my computer broke, they said. They gave me all sorts of CDs, mostly from bands I wasn’t really interested in. They could never remember what was hip, they said. Eventually, I just told them to give me iTunes money.

    Strange, the one on top has a picture of Julius Corvin on it. I don’t remember owning any of his CDs, I’m pretty sure I was buying my own music by that point. I reach over and pick it up to see if I can figure out when it was made. On the front is the title “Life’s a journey”, on the back is a bunch of songs with titles like, “Old friends”, “Trouble at the office”, and “The Future”. Wait, those aren’t Julius Corvin’s songs.

    Those are my songs.

    “I must say, you are a truly wonderful songwriter. Never has there been music I was more eager to steal.”

    I leap up and look around, then see him standing next to me. A man, about as tall as I am, with a cold, calculating grin. “You’re Julius Corvin!” I say.

   He looks at me like I’m a three-year-old learning the names of colors for the first time. “Why thank you for noticing. It’s not everyday I come over to the common part of the world to meet one of my devoted fans you know.”

    “Who let you in here? How did you get here? Why are you in my house?”

    He brushes me off. “Irrelevant.” He says. He walks around the room, checking it out thoroughly, with a look on his face that suggest he’s just entered a slum. “This place,” He says derisively, “This, room, if that’s what you want to call it, is truly the worst place I’ve ever been in in my entire life.”

     “It’s called living within your means. I don’t make millions off my music like you do, I can’t even get any adds, and thanks to you,” I say, waving the CD case in his face, “I will never be able to make any money-making music. Then again, I’ll never make money selling people the belief that they own things they don’t actually own in such a way that it sets the world on fire, so maybe that’s a good thing.”

    He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “Is that meant to be an insult?” He asks.

   I pause to think up a decent response. He continues, “A woman living in a trashy studio apartment with furniture so old it would be in a museum if it was anything anybody wanted to see thinks she can insult a man with a fanbase stretching across the globe. Do you really think I care if you don’t think my actions make me a good person? Goodness is never worthy of respect. Goodness makes you give up everything you have, so nobody can say you have more than your fair share. Goodness made you decide that it was worth spending money you would never have to go to a college you didn’t want to go to so you could waste your life at a job that makes you miserable.” He shakes his head sadly, “When I look at you, the very essence of purity and goodness, the compassionate person who would do anything if it made people happy, I don’t feel anything but pity for the circumstances that made you who you are. Just think of how much better it would have been if your parents had encouraged your bad tendencies.”

     I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Are you actually Julius Corvin, or are you the devil?” I ask.

     That’s when I look up and notice the blood red sky, with mountains around us and people screaming in the distance. “Oh god.” I scream.

    “Why are you invoking his name?” Julius asks me. “You don’t believe in Him. Neither did your parents. For you there is no god, nobody to look after you in your time of need, only people who want the world from you but never seem to give back.”

    I shout angrily, “My boss may be awful, but my coworkers are nice. My parents may ask a lot from me, but they give a lot in return. Janine’s amazing, she’s going to change our world one day, and Lisa, well, she’ll figure out who she is eventually, and when she does, she’ll amaze us all.”

    Julius looks at me with one eyebrow raise. He says, “Your boss is awful. You admit as much. Yet your coworkers don’t seem to be able to stand up to him and tell him enough is enough. You’ve seen what happens when people quit their jobs. All it would take would be for you to walk away and convince your coworkers to do the same. Then your boss would have to change he ways.”

    He starts pacing back and forth. I swear I see steam rising from his footsteps. “Then there’s your parents. You say they give you a lot, yet they didn’t even give you a present for Christmas last year.”

    “I’m an adult.” I retort, “And I read online that expecting adults to give presents to each other is stupid.”

    He looks at me. I sigh and say, “Also, I couldn’t afford to give them anything, so I told them to put the money they were going to spend into Lisa’s college fund.”

    “The fund they are managing with utmost care, letting it grow into an amount that, when the time comes, will let her attend Harvard if that’s what she chooses?”

   “Lisa doesn’t want to go to Harvard.” I say, then backpedal, “At least, I don’t think she does.”

   “Whether that’s what she wants or not is irrelevant. If your parents have the money and think she can get in, they’ll make her apply whether or not she wants to go, and if Harvard accepts, she’ll have to go even if that’s not what she wants. That’s what they made you and Janine do, wasn’t it?”

    He’s not wrong. I may be the only person who cheered when she found out Harvard rejected her. “Well, even if my sister is a complete airhead, she still deserves the best chance she can get to have a happy life, and if mom and dad have the money to make it happen, they should try.”

    “Indeed, they should try if they have the money. But, I fear, they don’t have the money to make it happen.”

   I leap up, “You don’t know that.”

   He looks at me the way a parent looks at a child who’s pet rat has just died, “You remember what your professor said when you were learning about finance. Don’t trust investment advisors who say they can do better than the stock market. You told your father that when he was looking to grow his retirement account. Yet your father went with him anyway. You keep telling yourself that it was just a harmless mistake, that your father would never let himself get hoodwinked, yet here he is, convinced that not only is his youngest daughter a genius worthy of getting into an Ivy league school, but that he’s so good with money he can make the same mistakes everyone else makes and suffer none of the consequences. Is it not possible that he’s doing this because he knows it will devastate you to learn that you sacrificed everything for your sister to be successful, only to then have to help pay for her college anyway? Could it be that he’s waiting for the day to show you just how little he actually cares about you?”

    “You don’t know my dad! He’d never do something like this! He worked as hard as he could to make sure we had a nice house to live in and could join all the clubs we wanted to. He was there when I couldn’t pass algebra and needed a tutor. He was so proud when Janine got into law school, and I got my degree in business. He’s not evil, if I need anything, he’ll be there for me.”

   In response, Julius points to my left. I turn an old lady, withered and frail, with baggy, wrinkled skin, and snow-white hair. I gasp, and see her mouth open too. I reach up to touch her, certain she needs help, then I realize.

   It’s a mirror.

  It’s me I’m seeing.

  I smash it. Glass goes flying. “I see you can’t handle the truth.” Julius says. He comes over and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Your job has aged you. You are no longer young, or pretty. Anyone who looks at you sees somebody so ugly they wish they could erase them from their mind. Yet you say that your parents would be there if they needed you. I don’t think they could be less present if they lived across the ocean.”

   I want to clap back. I want to say that there’s no way it could be this bad. I want to say that even if I aged one hundred years since this pandemic started, my parents would still love me. But he’s right. As soon as they could convince themselves it was safe, they started pushing me to come over for dinner. Even when I had work, they made me come over for my sister’s birthday. Even though I told dad time and again to check his financial statements, he told me I knew nothing about a subject I had to study to get my degree. I know they love me, but at the moment I’m not sure they care about me anymore than my idiot boss does.

    Julius laughs. “You finally get it. You finally understand that parents who push their daughter to go to law school could never be good people.”

   “Not all lawyers are bad.” I say.

   “True.” Julius says, “Just enough to taint the whole lot of them. Like how all singers aren’t evil, just the ones you like to listen to.”

   The he laughs. And doesn’t stop laughing. The ground beneath me begins to shake, then open up. I fall in, screaming for help, then land. I look around and see the metal bars surrounding me and the ceiling made of stone. I’m in a cell. I scream and bang in the bars. Then Julius comes up and grabs my wrist.

   “Don’t bother screaming. Nobody will hear you, and even if they did, I doubt they would care. You’re trapped here, just like your trapped in your putrid job and your awful family. You will never escape, things will never get better, you will always be a prisoner.”

    I pull my arm free and scream at him, “I am nobody’s prisoner. I won’t let you destroy me. I will break free from this cell and my miserable life, and I will be successful.”

     All he says is, “Be grateful I stole your music. It’s the only way anyone will care about what you have to say. Too bad they’ll never know you said it.”

                                                                                      ***

    I wake with a lurch. Thank God it was just a dream. Wait, if it was a dream, then why didn’t I take the chance to punch his stupid face when I still had it? I know I’m not good at lucid dreaming, but surely when I saw that the man who used to be my favorite musician was in my apartment gloating about how he stole my music, I should have known it was a dream. Who would even publish music on CDs anyway unless they were planning on selling it at a crafts fair?

    Looking back, it feels laughable to think that Julius Corvin would even be able to find my music, let alone want to steal it. I have five subscribers, so there’s no way he’d find it unless he knew my name, and I’m not even anywhere on his forums. Even if he saw it, I doubt it’s original or witty enough that he would want to steal it. In a way, I almost wish I thought he would. Then I would know that not only am I able to write amazing music, but I’d also have the satisfaction of suing him. Granted, it would be horrifically expensive from my perspective and nothing more than a minor inconvenience for him, but sometimes us little folk have to take what we can get.

    Imagine what it would be like to sue him. I’d call Janine first and tell her everything, then send her a big box of evidence that I’d meticulously collected. Then I’d set up a crowd funding page and tell Lisa to tell all of her followers on social media about it. I’d then post a video talking about how much I loved him as a teen, how he remained a source of inspiration throughout my college years, and how when I was an adult plugging away at work, he was the only thing that kept me sane, but then he got involved in the shadiest scam and man can attempt to pull on those who value him, and I saw him for the man he truly was, the devil in human form, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he decided to steal from someone, but I had no clue it would be me. Unlike all my other videos, this would spread far and wide, as everyone seeing it would be moved by a sense of justice, and I would get all the money I needed to prove I’d been wronged. After I won the case, I would have a massive following, moved by my lovely music that perfectly encapsulated what it felt like to live in the 2020’s.

    That would be amazing. Too bad that won’t happen.

    The rest of the dream though. I know he spent a lot of time badmouthing me and my parents, but I don’t remember what he said. I wish I did, so I could prove just how much of a liar he really is. I think most of it was about how my parents don’t really care about me, they just pretend they do. Well, that’s easy enough to disprove, just look at all the photos they hang up on the walls of me and my sisters. I don’t think the dream was really saying anything about how I think my parents don’t like me much, it’s just me being stressed about work.

    I’m about to settle in to go back to sleep, then I pick up my cell phone to check how long before my alarm rings. It’s 5:15 now. My alarm’s set for six. I moan. I know I could technically go back to sleep, but I know I won’t be able to, so I may as well get up. I throw off the covers, and then I just weep. I’m so tired of work. I’m tired of never getting a good night’s sleep. I’m tired of watching the world collapse around me.

   It’s not just that we can’t get any more employees at work. It’s going through the grocery store and seeing all the empty shelves. It’s reading articles about how many school districts can’t find teachers and many hospitals can’t find doctors and nurses. It’s seeing people online complain about the proliferation of NFTs and seeing many wealthy elites buy into them anyway and watching them push us to buy them as well. It’s knowing that the world sucks, has always sucked, and there isn’t a thing I can do that will change it.

     I don’t just want to quit my job right now. I want to quit life. I want to just hole up in my house and weep for everything I’ve lost, not just since the pandemic, but since 2016, that sense of hope that things would always get better and I would never, in my life, feel like I was at risk of never having enough. But I can’t do that. No matter how bad I feel, I can’t stop going out and doing my part, even if doing so leaves me feeling so empty inside. I wish so badly my parents were part of the ultra-wealthy, the people who don’t even notice we’re struggling. Then I wouldn’t be trapped in my life, and I could live it like I always had. I know that makes me a bad person, but right at the moment I don’t care.

    I look at my phone again and see a notification that Lisa’s posted. It’s probably from yesterday, but she could be getting ready for class. I remember her complaining about how horrible school’s been lately. If she’s up this early, she might have a point. I can’t help but feel sorry for her, it’s one thing for an adult to worry about the world, it’s another thing for someone who isn’t even out of high school yet.

    I get out of bed and wander to my bathroom. I look into the mirror and notice the bags under my eyes. I don’t know that my job has aged me, but it certainly has drained my spirit.

    Whatever. Nobody in the world has ever wanted to do their part, but we keep doing it anyway because our friends and family needs us. I could give up, but that would only make me a bad person, the kind who lives with their parents until their forty because the don’t want to admit they’re losers.

    So it’s time to get ready. No matter how tired I am, no matter how much I want to just leave, I have to keep working. It’s the only thing that reminds me that I’m still a good person.

All the World's a Stage, Chapter 3

   According to the clock on the wall behind me, I’ve only been at work for an hour. According to my sense of exhaustion, I’ve been here for twelve.

    I worked until one in the morning last night, and still didn’t manage to get finish everything I needed to get done, which would be fine if this wasn’t the third time this month it had happened. I’m sure the boss would fire me if it wasn’t for the fact that he can’t find anyone to replace the people we’ve already lost, and he’s not eager to lose more.

    When I first started this job in the beginning of 2020, we had twelve people in the office. I didn’t talk to them a lot, but they seemed to know that they were doing. Then the pandemic hit, and they sent us all home in March. There were some growing pains when they were putting the virtual infrastructure in, but most of us were glad to not have to commute. Then schools went remote, and we lost two people when they had to quit to help their kids through school. We had to take on a bit more work, but it was going to be fine once we got more people in.

    Then we had to go back to work, before they’d made vaccines, and four more people left because they didn’t want to risk their lives for a job when they had other options. Over 2021 we lost two more people, which wouldn’t have sucked so much except that they don’t seem eager to replace them. My boss says they can’t find anyone who’s willing to work for what they’re willing to pay. Frankly, if I wasn’t already working here, I wouldn’t be willing to apply either.

   Aside from me, the other people working here are Maryann Williams, Lucy Nguyen, and Nina Cravitz. Lucy’s the best in the department, despite being as overworked as the rest of us, she never falls behind like I do, complain like Maryann, or fall asleep at her desk like Nina does. I don’t know if I find that impressive or infuriating, but I get the feeling that if she was floundering, our boss might get the hint and start employing more people. As it is, this is the third day in a row I can’t keep my eyes open despite drinking three cups of coffee. I know from experience that if I drink any more, I won’t be able to sleep even if I don’t have to bring work home.

    I send off an email, then get up to get a drink of water, mostly because I’m hoping that movement will magically instill a desire to do something more productive than stare at my screen in frustration. On my way to the water cooler, I notice that Nina has, once again, fallen asleep at her desk. She didn’t do this when we had enough people for all the work in the department, she’s just overworked and sleep deprived like I am. I reach down and tap her shoulder, and she leaps up and says, “Sorry sir,” before noticing it’s me.

    “Looks like you haven’t had coffee yet.” I say.

    She sighs and says, “I’ve already had a cup.”

    I scoff and say, “That’s weak. I’ve had three, and I’ve only been here for an hour.”

    “Really?” she says, sounding dubious.

     “I was up until one last night.” I say

     She says, “No wonder you look so tired.” Then she gets a look on her face like she realizes what she just said.

     “Don’t worry, it’s not your fault I was working long after I should have been in bed.” I say, glaring at the boss’ door. “I’m sure it’ll be over once they hire more people.” I say, with the biggest smile I can muster. We’ve been joking about how they aren’t hiring anyone to help us, but that stopped being funny about three months ago.

      I grab water and then head back to my cubicle, and on the way am met by our boss. By some miracle, I don’t grumble “What the hell do you want?” at him, like I really, really want to right now.

    “Ellen,” He says pleasantly, having gotten a decent night’s sleep, “Do you have the report I asked for yesterday?”

    “Which one?” I ask, trying not to sound sullen and annoyed.

   He frowns at me, “The one I sent you home with” he says.

   I try to remember. Last night already seems like a bad dream, the kind I’ve been having way to often lately. I go to my desk to check and realize I didn’t manage to finish it. “Sorry sir, it’s not ready.”

  He frowns and says, “Why can’t you finish your work on time? I know we’re a little short staffed at the moment, but that’s no excuse for not giving your all and pulling your weight. We need you to do all you can for us, and you’re letting us down Ellen, especially after I let you leave work early yesterday. I’m so disappointed in you.”

     I don’t say anything, because I can’t think of anything to say that isn’t some variation of, “I’m giving my all you monster. It’s not my fault you refuse to hire someone or help us out in any way, and I’m tired of getting yelled at for not wanting to work overtime.” He eventually leaves, looking disgusted, and for a moment I’m tempted to send a letter to HR about his behavior. Unfortunately, HR is notoriously useless here.

    I go back to work. Work seems to drag on forever, especially since we’re all so swamped that we can’t talk to each other or share gossip. To pass the time, I put a check mark on a sticky note every time the thought “I want to quit” crosses my mind. I’ve been doing this ever since May of last year when I only put one or two marks on a sticky note per day. Now there’s rarely a day I don’t think this at least twenty times.

     The only highlight of my day is when I go past Nina’s desk on my way to the bathroom and see that her desktop background is a picture of Julius Corvin. I can’t suppress a flash of rage, but I ask her, “You a fan?”

    She flinches, then says, “No, I’ve just had the same desktop background since college. I don’t like his music anymore, but I like this picture anyway.”

    I think about it for a bit, then say, “I was a fan in high school. I used to pretend I was his girlfriend.”

    Nina gets a weird look on her face, “Wasn’t he, like, forty or something?” She asks.

   I shrug and say, “Teenage girls get crushes on older guys all the time, it’s not a problem unless he asks her out, and he was thousands of miles from me in a giant mansion filled to the brim with security, there’s no way I could get even close enough for that to be a problem.”

    Nina looks at her computer screen and says, “I never liked him much, but my brother’s and I would listen to his music on road trips. We live far enough away now that we don’t travel together anymore. I found that his music doesn’t sound as good when you’re not in a car.”

     “You’re smarter than I am. I thought he was god until about a month ago.” I say.

     “Why?” Nina asks.

     “Why did I think he was a god, or why do I not think he’s a god anymore?” I ask.

     “Both I guess.” She says.

     “I thought he was a god because I liked the sound of his voice. I never actually checked to see if he was a good person. I stopped thinking he was a god when I learned he was producing NFTs.”

     Nina looks disgusted. “I didn’t know he was doing that.” She tells me.

     I sigh. “From what I can tell, every famous person is evil. If they aren’t evil when they start out, they will be by the end of it.”

     She laughs, and we both go about our day until she leaves at eight. I stay for another hour more because I feel like I should than because I want to please our boss, who, as usual, left at five.

     I can’t help but think about Julius Corvin for the rest of the day, even on my drive home. I hate him, but at the same time I feel kind of sad. The part of me that wanted to date him in high school, that used a picture I took of him when I was in the backrow of one of his concerts as my desktop until I went to college, wants to think that he turned out the way he did because he didn’t have anyone who was willing to stop him. But that reasoning falls apart when I think about the fact that no one in my family would stop me if I got into NFTs, and I still wouldn’t do it even if I was told I had to do it or else I would die.

    I never liked him as a person. I didn’t follow him obsessively on social media like all my friends did, because I knew from reading tabloid headlines in the checkout lane that every famous person is a monster once you know enough about them. But that doesn’t mean I was happy when I found out it was true.

   The problem is that for as long as I’ve listened to his music, Julius Corvin has lived in my head rent free, as a man who wanted to date a much younger woman when I was in high school, and now as a man willing to do anything, no matter how scummy, for easy money. When I was young and read a story about a little boy who loved a soldier more than anything, only to learn that the soldier had faked all his accomplishments, I promised myself that I would never meet any of my idols in real life, lest I learn just how evil they really were. I plan on keeping that promise, but I wish there were some way I could meet up with Julius Corvin and tell him exactly what I think of him, and where I hope he ends up when he dies.

       

My future

   It's 2027. I live in a small, cheap apartment somewhere in western Washington. Thanks to tech the cost of living is going up everywhere, and thanks to global warming the temperatures keep going up. But for now, I can still live here, and I'll stay for as long as I can. 

    I don't see my family that often. Sometimes I send them Christmas gifts, but beyond that I don't talk to them at all. Many see estrangement as a tragedy, but for me it's a blessing. It means I don't have to rely on my relatives to take care of me. 

   There's talk of implementing universal basic income, but that hasn't happened yet. I'm glad the blog has become successful enough that I can live off of the money I make from it. Health insurance is a problem, but fortunately my mother still helps me with that. Since I rent, I don't have to worry about too many home expenses, although taking my laundry down the hall kind of sucks. 

    When I'm not writing for my blog, I'm practicing drawing or taking photo's. None of it is great, but it helps take my mind off of my fear of the future. The people who love my blog love it, but it's always going to be a bit niche. Sometimes I hear people saying things similar to what I write, but I don't know if it's because they heard it from someone who follows my blog, or if it's because I'm able to see what people are thinking before they think it. 

    I've self published some stuff on amazon, but now I'm working on getting my first traditionally published book out. It's a story I've wanted to tell for years. My followers keep begging for me to publish an anthology of poetry, but I want to wait until I've come up with a poem that's better than the one I wrote in the middle of 2020. It's not my most famous poem, but it's still the one I think is the best. I keep trying to write something better, but my brain can't seem to come up with anything good. 

   The world at large is trying to put the pandemic behind it, but if you ask me the scars are very visible. The country hasn't collapsed yet, but everyone is still worried that it could happen any day now. Companies still can't find workers, workers aren't able to find jobs, everything's still a mess. We've come to accept that this is our life now. We don't like it, but nobody can seem to come up with something better. Everyone agrees this state of things won't last forever, but all anyone can do is take it day by day and hope that when things fall apart, they'll have enough warning to run as fast as they can. 

    One piece of good news is that NFTs have fallen into obscurity, to the point where I forget they exist until I see video's of them. The bad news is they were replaced by Bit Books, which are sort of like NFTs except that they don't aim to turn everything into a stock market, they aim to turn everything into obscure tech that's impossible for anyone but a special few to understand. Every author seems to have had their work stolen to turn into these things, to the point where congress is now looking into creating a law to ban them. I for one am all for it, but I don't think it'll pass. 

    Sometimes I look back at the stuff I wrote during the pandemic and think about all the people who insisted we would go back to normal. In some ways we did, in some ways we didn't. People are going back to concerts and bars, many went back to the office, and school has gone back to being what it mostly was before the pandemic. But snow days are now mostly a thing of the past. More and more people are getting to work from home. Students in schools all across the country are doing most of their work on computers. 

   What I find most striking is how many people seem to have given up on getting the things they were fighting for not that long ago. People still push, but most seem to have forgotten how, not that long ago, we saw the system fail. I do hope that someday, we'll live in a true land of dreams instead of a land of lies. For now, all I can do is take life one day at a time. 

All the Worlds a Stage, Chapter 2

   I’m at the house my parents bought when they married, on the table in front of me is a half-eaten cake that had the words “Happy Birthday Lisa” written on it. On my right side sits my older sister Janine, on the left is my father, and across from us is my mother and my younger sister Lisa. 

     My father is going on about how his coworkers keep inviting him to do things, but he has to turn them down because he’s worried about missing time with Lisa. Funny, he didn’t worry about missing time with me and Janine. My mother is just nodding. She works to, but it’s always been her job raise us, so work was never a big thing with her the way it was with dad. 

    “Has work been busy lately?” I ask, mostly because I’m sick of hearing him go on about how important Lisa is to him. 

    “It’s been about normal. Everyone at my office knows that you can’t quit work just because you’re a little upset about something. How about you, have things been overly busy at your workplace lately?” 

    “No,” I lie. I’m worried that if I say too much, I’ll start going on a rant about how much of an idiot my boss is, how frustrated I am to be in a department that used to have twelve people in it but now only has four, not counting the person who’s supposed to be running it, and stating just how much I wish I could just quit and go back to my old bedroom and pretend life hadn’t changed since I turned eighteen. But I’m a grown up, and grown ups know better than to complain about how awful their life is, no matter how much they really wish they could. 

   “Lucky you. Schools been awful. It’s bad enough that we had to go back to virtual learning, now all the teachers keep pushing so much homework on us. I can’t go to bed before midnight, it’s so bad, and I’ve still got all these clubs I have to manage, ugh, it’s unbearable.” 

    I try not to look at Lisa. I don’t want to be the one to tell her that as bad as she thinks high school is, it’s only going to get worse. And really, it’s not like she’s doing anything that me and Janine didn’t manage to do, so what’s the big deal. 

     “Are you writing everything down in your planner?” Mother asks. 

      “Of course, I am Mom but there’s so much I can’t possibly do it all. I’m getting at least an hours’ worth of homework from each class, and with clubs and community service, I’m just swamped. I feel like I should just give up being able to pass anything right now.” Lisa whines.

      “Maybe you should spend less time on that blog of yours.” Janine says, crisply. 

      The table goes silent. Every family has that one thing they don’t talk about, in my family it’s the blog that Lisa supposedly runs in her spare time, but in reality, has devoted her entire life to. That and Facebook and Instagram. She’s convinced that someday somebody is going to see her and be moved to make her famous, then she can stop pretending she’s trying to pass her classes or putting any effort into her extracurricular work, and she can cost on by without doing any real work. My parents were quick to point out that my plans for the future were stupid, but don’t seem to be doing anything to remind Lisa of the fact that in the real world, her looks won’t get her anywhere, and she doesn’t have enough of a personality to become a star. 

    I’ve never read her blog. I don’t plan on reading it either. She’s annoying enough to listen to in real life.

    Mom stands up and starts putting dishes away. Dad goes to the living room to watch TV, Lisa goes of to her room, and Janine says she has to get going. That leaves me and mom to work on dishes and put the food away.  

    “I do wish Janine hadn’t said that.” Mom says.

    “Said what?” I ask

   “Said that Lisa should cut back on writing her blog. This pandemic’s been awful for her, and we just can’t be there the way she needs us to be. I’ve been grateful she has an outlet for her pain, and I’m worried she’ll give that up if she listens to her.”

    “How is writing random garbage and throwing it up on the internet supposed to help anyone? She’s got to focus on school, otherwise she’ll just end up living in a slum hole with no friends and nobody to talk to except you and dad. This is her future you’re talking about, and from where I’m standing, you’re just letting her throw it away.” I say.

     “We’re not letting that happen. We’ve been pushing her; you just haven’t been around to see it.” She puts the final dishes in the dishwasher and says, “Can you tell Lisa to get the garbage before she goes to bed?”

   “I can get it.” I say.

   “I know that, but I want to teach Lisa responsibility.” Mom says, smiling.

   I walk down the hallway to Lisa’s room. On the walls are pictures of me and Janine when we little, when all we had to do to impress people was win a trophy in soccer or math club. Lisa didn’t get a lot of pictures; she was born nine and a half years after I was, and mom and dad weren’t planning for another child. Looking back, I don’t remember her doing much worth memorializing, probably why there isn’t a lot on the walls aside from her school pictures.

      I knock on her bedroom door. “Go away,” She yells, “I’m trying to study.”

     On her birthday? Yeah, right. I open the door to see her on her laptop, opened up to Tumblr. “Mom, says you have to take out the trash.” I say.

   “Right now? I’m busy!” Lisa yells.

   “With this?” I say, gesturing to her laptop. “You know if you don’t focus on school, you won’t be able to get into college, right?”

     “Who cares about college? Everyone knows it’s a waste of money anyways.”

     “The only way to get a job that pays well is through college, Lisa. Surely you know that by now.”

    “Yes, I do, that’s why you and Janine have beautiful five story mansions and Mom and Dad are planning to travel the world when they retire.”

   I can’t help but wince. “Well, at least I make more than I would have made if I hadn’t gone to college.” I reply.

    “Really? From what I hear, you can get a certificate in IT support online and make more money than you’re making now.”

    “So why aren’t you doing that instead of focusing all of your mental energy on social media?” I yell. “You know Mom and Dad can’t support you forever, and deep down I’m pretty sure you know that all this writing you’re doing isn’t going to lead you anywhere. You aren’t a good writer, you can’t even manage to get anything above a C in language arts, and I know you don’t have the personality you need to be an influencer.”

    Lisa turns away from me. “Go Away.” She growls.

   “Aren’t you going to get the trash?” I ask.

   “I said go away!” She says, throwing a pillow at me.

   I back away and close the door. I walk back to the kitchen and tell mom, “She’ll be out to get it soon.”

  “I hope she doesn’t forget it this time.” Mom grumbles.

  I don’t have high hopes there. Lisa never remembers to do chores if she can at all help it. “She’ll remember to do it eventually.” I reassure her, though I don’t think it’s true. “I have to go, it’s getting late.” 

   “Okay, have a safe drive sweetie.” Mom says, giving me a hug.

   The drive home is long, especially since it’s dark. I love my family, but sometimes I wish Mom and Dad didn’t insist on inviting me over to dinner so often. It was alright when I lived less than an hour from them and the pandemic hadn’t hit yet, but now it almost feels like a chore. Not helping the issue is that they keep harping on me every time I turn an invitation down, and I keep having to do that because work’s been so crazy lately. I didn’t even want to come today, but Dad said this is Lisa’s last birthday before she turns eighteen, and I don’t want to miss out on my baby sister growing up. And I didn’t have the heart to tell him that if I could have missed all of it, I would have.

     The apartment’s dead quiet, or at least it would be if I could afford one with quiet neighbors, but I can’t even afford an apartment with decent heating. I open up The Future’s soundtrack file, thinking that if I work on it today won’t be a complete waste, but then I remember that I have a lot of stuff I need to do and because I had to leave work early to be at my sister’s birthday party, I didn’t finish it, so I start on that instead.

    Why did I have to go again? I told Mom and Dad I didn’t have the money to get Lisa a birthday present, and they still said I had to come. I love them, but I can’t keep going to their house if I want to keep my job, and if I lose my job, they’ll be angry at me, but if I don’t go to their house, they’ll be upset with me for not fulfilling familial obligations. I just can’t win. 

    I can’t help but think about what Lisa said, that people with just a certificate in IT support make more money than I do. I remember looking into it when I got my first stimulus check in May 2020 but decided that I didn’t want to go back to school, the sixteen years of it I’d had already was more than enough. Looking back, part of me wishes I’d gotten a certificate in something, so I had something else to do other than go to work in a job I don’t like. Frankly though, I don’t think another job would be any better. From what I hear, any job in any industry is designed to take as much as it can from you and give you as little as possible in return. Workers have gotten better at fighting back, so the employers retaliated by sending our jobs as far away as possible. Now we live in a world where nobody has money, so nobody can buy anything, and as a result there isn’t anything around to buy. And everyone expects it to get worse before it gets better. 

    Well, at least I’m still fairly certain it will get better, at least eventually. Many people don’t think it will anymore. I don’t even think they’re entirely wrong. I remember growing up and being told that things would only get better, that we would be smarter, kinder, and wealthier than our parents ever were. Instead, we ended up being fooled by misinformation, yelling at strangers online for no reason, and bogged down by student loans. Why would anyone think that things would get better? The only reason I think things will get better eventually is that, deep down, I’m still a little kid who dressed up and pretended she was destined to marry a prince one day. 

    But I’m twenty-six years old now and haven’t dated anyone since I left college, let alone formed a serious long-term relationship. My apartment’s about as far from a castle as you could get, and if it wasn’t for stimulus money, there would be nothing in my bank account. I keep making music, not because I think I have a future, but I want to pretend I do. But how is me posting songs on YouTube any different from Lisa writing stuff on Tumblr? Nobody follows either of us, and work’s so busy I can’t write any music, let alone post it.

     I remember Dad saying that the reason communism failed, and capitalism succeeded was that under communism, you couldn’t dream of a future that was better than your present. You had everything you were ever going to have, there was no reason to aim higher. If that’s true, then somewhere along the way capitalism lost sight of what it was supposed to do, because somewhere along the way me and everyone I know was hit in the face with the reality that not only would we never achieve our dreams, but we’d also be lucky to eke out a decent living. Now people dream of being Youtubers or influencers, and it’s not for fame, it’s because they want something to hope for again, something their parents and bosses can’t take from them.

   Lisa hasn’t reached that point yet, and Janine makes more money than I do. I’m the only person in my family who’s lost her right to dream. I wish my parents, and the world, would understand that. 

All The world's a Stage, Chapter 1

      I don’t know what I wanted, and I don’t remember why I wanted it. I only know I didn’t want to live in a cheap studio apartment an hour away from work, with no friends and no one to talk to aside from my parents and sisters. 

    I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Greatness is reserved for people with names like Julius Caesar or Queen Elizabeth. Nobody remembers people like Ellen Thompson, someone who once had grand ambitions, or at least ambitions of doing something grand. Then the student loans came due and real life came crashing down. Now all I can do is try to remember what it was like to believe I could be great someday. 

      When I was in high school, I dreamed of being a professional singer. The kind who walks into the audition room and the next day they’re on a giant stage in front of a crowd of millions singing about how the modern world sucks and things would be better if we just listened to each other. My parents told me that was stupid. I’m pretty and my voice is decent, but if you want to be a singer, you can’t just be decent, you need to be amazing. 

      So I gave on singing and went to college. I got a degree in business, because nothing else interested me, and I got a job. Then I got another job. Then the pandemic hit, and I ended up stuck in my house trying my best to work from home. Then I had to go back to work because my boss was convinced that the only way to motivate us to work hard was to make us face death. Then, adding insult to injury, my favorite singer since high school, Julius Corvin, decided to get involved in NFTs. I was enraged, but nobody else seemed to mind. 

     The only real joy I have any more is the hours I get to myself in my apartment. Even for cheap apartments, it’s awful. There’s no soundproofing, the plumbing’s always breaking, there’s no insulation, and the landlord never answers the phone. But it’s mine, and I put up some foam pads to turn it into a studio of a sort to live out my dreams of being a singer. 

      I don’t have many hits yet. Okay, I don’t have any hits at all. I don’t think any of my videos has gotten above a double-digit view count. I keep telling myself it’s alright, everyone starts small, the next one could be a hit, but then the next rent check comes and I calculate how much I spent on gas, and I get another bill from my student loan provider, and I look around at my apartment, with it’s cheap paint job and ugly ceiling and furniture from my parents and thrift stores, and wish that I had just a little bit more money, just enough to not feel like I’m on the edge of failure. 

    I’m trying to write my big break now. It’s a song called “The Future”,  based on the line from Julius Corvin’s song “Memories”, “My past was bleak, but the future is bright and free”. I was listening to it the other day and thinking about how wrong he was. I know the song was written in 2012 but looking back I’m not sure why I thought the future was bright. I saw my parents both lose their jobs in the recession. I saw my older sister lose her soul to the law office she worked at. I saw my younger sister demonstrate, time and again, that she had no dreams and ambitions and was determined to waste her life away. And I know hindsight is 20-20 but looking back I’m not sure why I thought He Who Must Not Be Named would lose the election, and I’m not sure why I thought Biden could do any better. 

     My parents keep saying that the worst is behind us. We’ve got a decent president again, the world’s opening back up, and we can resume our normal lives at last. Soon the republican party will wake up from this awful nightmare and become a sensible party again, and we can put all this awfulness behind us and pretend it never happened. I don’t believe them. Hearing them talk about how things will go back to normal is like hearing them insist that Santa Claus is real despite the fact that I’m an adult. The news keeps talking about how Covid isn’t going away, that it’s just going to end up being endemic and we’ll eventually forget it’s there. I keep hearing think pieces about how what happened last January wasn’t a fluke, that the monsters who made it happened still have enough power to make it happen again, and it’s only a matter of time until they do. I go into work every day, and I look up at a giant building built by people who have so much more money than I will ever make, let alone have at one time, and I wonder why people don’t understand the increasing calls for change, by any means necessary. My boss keeps talking about how to revolutionize the business, talking about how technology will make us grow and help us become more profitable, and he keeps saying his boss will invest in things that honestly turn my stomach, but I don’t think I can leave because aside from leftover stimulus money I have no savings, and there’s no way my parents will support me. They’ve got enough on their plates trying to keep my sister studying enough to not flunk her junior year of high school. 

    I wonder if I should stream myself singing. I don’t know if anyone would watch it, but it sounds like fun, and I badly need fun right now. It feels like everything else is trying to rip itself apart as fast as possible. But I don’t want to stream until I’ve finished “The Future”. It’s the best song I’ve ever written, I’m sure it is, but right now all I’ve got written is the chorus:

Is this my present, or is it a prison?

I keep belting out my thoughts, but nobody wants to listen.

Have I committed a cardinal sin? Will I ever be forgiven?

Because this isn’t the life I was planning on living.

     I’ll be the first to admit the lyrics aren’t great. I can’t seem to write anything good no matter how hard I try. The music isn’t any better. I mostly just want to get my thoughts out there where people can hear me, even if nobody does. 

     People keep talking about how there isn’t any community anymore. Is that why it feels like I can never talk about things that are bothering me? I remember having a huge group of friends in both high school and college, but now it just feels like I’m living my life parelel to everyone else. I can see them, they can see me, but we never interact. I keep thinking that once my schedule clears up, I’ll leave my apartment and make the friends I badly wish I had, but I never seem to have the energy. And with Covid, I don’t even know if it would be safe to try. 

    The only time I see anyone is when my parents invite me over for dinner, and I only go because I feel awful every time I refuse, and there’s so much going on at work I usually have to. I know that we’re all vaccinated, and both my parents work from home anyway, but I just don’t feel safe going over to their place. I don’t know why. 

      Maybe it’s because I have to go into the office every day and most weekends. I don’t know how many of my coworkers are vaccinated, though we all wear masks so I’m sure that it’s safe, in theory at least. But we don’t talk to each other except in meetings, and nobody seems to want to be there anyway. We’re losing people and we can’t seem to get new ones in, so I keep having more and more work piled on me, but I haven’t seen a pay raise. I keep working overtime, because I don’t want to tell my parents that I didn’t try my hardest to keep my job. 

     I wish I wasn’t such a good person sometimes. My younger sister gets away with all kinds of awful behavior because she’s done it so long nobody expects her to be any better. If I screwed up more often, swore at my parents, yelled at my sisters, told my boss where he can stick his attitude, then I would be free to be who I want to be, instead of somebody my parents wanted me to be when I was a child. 

     But it’s too late. I can’t change who I am. And life isn’t going to get better, no matter what my parents say. 

Story announcement

    I’ve got a new story on the way soon. Well, less a story and more me expressing my worries and fears about the world through the persona of a woman who, unlike me, actually lives in it. I confess, it was fun to write. Cathartic I guess.

   It’ll start this Wednesday if all goes well. So look forward to that.

The big book of Enchantments, Chapter 9, Jessica's Story

     I’m not a hero. Heroes don’t get this frightened of people who can’t hurt them. Heroes don’t let their companions get taken by someone who should never have been a threat to them. Heroes save the day before anyone else knows that it needs to be saved. I didn’t stop her, even though I knew the spell was coming, and because of that, I now have to save my friends. 

    If they were in the Citadel somewhere, it would be easy to save them. We can’t afford new books for the library, let alone fancy prison cells. Sadly, the Enchantress is aware of that fact and probably has them in one of the Citadel’s dimensional rooms, built by our founders to keep ruffians in check. No one but the head of the Citadel or one of their chosen favorites is supposed to get in, but the way we check involves measuring somebody’s resistances, so maybe I can get in.

     The spell is complicated, though not as complicated as some of the ones I remember from the capital. One more way we’re way behind everyone else I suppose. It’s still more complicated than what I’m used to. I’m about to give up on finding an entrance when I notice the part of the spell that’s supposed to detect intruders isn’t catching on me at all. I don’t know if that’s because I don’t have any resistance, but it seems like someone should have checked for that at some point. 

    I come into a hallway that looks just like the rest of the Citadel, the same way my room still looks like my room in dreams. I keep seeing bits where it’s clear whoever made this knew something had to go there but didn’t remember what should go there. I can hear the Enchantress talking, presumably the others are nearby. I continue walking down the hall, before I notice that everything seems a bit, off. I poke the wall, and I notice there’s no resistance. This isn’t real, it’s an illusion. 

     The Enchantress can’t do much magic. She can do more than most, but that’s only because magic users are exceedingly rare these days. What she can do is create illusions good enough to fool almost everyone who gets trapped in them. I can sometimes see through them, because the illusion spell she likes to use doesn’t always notice that I’m there.

     I open the Big Book of Enchantments to find a way to dispel the illusion, but then remember my father telling me that the dimensional rooms have no true form. It could be the illusion is the only thing keeping me here. I move down the hall until I notice the book at the end. I look at it, and I notice the seal on the front. No doubt about it, this is the Book of Knowledge, the only thing stopping the Enchantress from being totally powerless. 

     I could try and take it, but from what I’ve heard it’s one of those artifacts that hurts you if you aren’t it’s chosen wielder. I don’t know how that works, but I’m not going to test it. I do have to wonder how it got here though; I don’t think the Enchantress would let it out of her sight. 

     Suddenly I get an idea. This book is old, older than the Citadel is. Or at least that’s what they say in the history of artifacts class I had to take. If it breaks apart, it could destabilize the illusion spell and allow everyone to break free. I open the Big Book of enchantments, find a spell, and cast it. 

     The book breaks apart instantly. At first nothing happens, then the spell starts to loosen up. I see Johnathon poke his head out.

    “Jessica, what are you doing here?” He asks

     “Rescuing you, of course.” 

    I see the others looking confused and yell, “Follow me. You don’t want to be here when the spell fails.” 

    I run back the way I came. Finding one’s way out of an illusion is difficult, but in this case the spell is failing so quickly that all I have to do is follow the backbone of it to get out. In the distance I hear the Enchantress cry out. I think she just discovered she’s now powerless. 

    We make it out just as the spell fails. I look around at everyone and say, “Sorry, I didn’t get the shield up in time, are you alright?”

    Everyone nods. I look back and notice we’re back in the middle of the field. 

    “I think it’s over. She can’t do anything without the Book of Knowledge.” I say.

    “What happened to it?” Zac asks. 

    “I found it in the illusion and destroyed it.”

    Zac nods. “So, what now?” He asks

   I don’t know. I had no plans. “I guess we just go about our lives.” I say.

  I mean it to. This adventure is over. Or at least, over until the next time we meet up. 

 

The End?