General Disillusionment

By Melissa Tonkin

The news comes on the TV at 7:02 p.m. Considering it’s called ‘The News at Seven,’ it’s late. The night’s top story is breaking. A black and white sketch fills the screen: the Unabomber in sunglasses and a hoodie.

I don’t breathe.

‘Investigators arrested Theodore Kaczynski today at his remote cabin, finding a wealth of bomb components, handwritten journals and one live bomb, ready for mailing. Those who knew him in the past say that Kaczynski was a bright child, a prodigy in mathematics, yet a recluse,’ the female reporter says in that irritating cadence intended to project superiority.

A bright child. A prodigy in mathematics, yet a recluse. She could be describing me.

I lean forward, watching him being led out in handcuffs. The guy, with his messy hair and beige sweater, looks nothing like the gangster sketch the media has used for years. This doesn’t surprise me. After all, life is full of discrepancies between perception and reality. The news ends, and I grab a Cheeto, toss my empty Coke can, and tell Sid I’ll be back. He gives me that look as if to say, I’m well aware of your routine, David.

I step into the cool April evening, fat raindrops hitting my jacket in a staccato of splats.

Kaczynski.

I mull over his name as I walk through the residential darkness, and think of our similarities: him wandering back and forth from his cabin to his bomb-shed like a pendulum of isolation and intellect; me wandering back and forth from my shithole of an apartment to the 7ELEVEn like a clock winding down, ticking because it has nothing else to do. We share the solitary life: two outliers, plotted far from the mean, disconnected from the data set of humanity. Except for the fact that now everyone knows his name and mine’s as anonymous as ever.

I turn right onto Crawford Avenue and think, but that’s not exactly true, now is it, David? There is Bob, the garbage guy, who waves at me every Monday morning, clinging to the side of the moving truck as if it’s his own personal chariot.

‘Dave!’ he yells, his beaming toothless smile suggesting years of inhaling fetid rubbish has done little harm to his psyche. I return his greeting with a wave. I do not know how he knows my name, but he does.

And there’s Roberta, the $20 prostitute (her occupational definition, not mine; apparently, ‘sex worker’ is a term that soothes everyone except those doing the job). Just like Bob, she calls out my name every time she sees me, her leggings so tight they cause her waist to resemble an over-sized muffin from Harrison’s bakery.

‘David baby! It makes me sad to see your dick so lonely.’ Her line hooked me a few times but quickly became stale, like an old Cheeto. Again, I always return a wave—she’s doing her best to survive, just like me—but ensure I keep my eyes on her face, to sidestep any expectations but mainly to avoid thoughts of oversized muffins. Not that I couldn’t eat one whenever I wanted—six months of unemployment has left me skinny—but Harrison’s Bakery is ridiculously overpriced.

I turn left onto Clifford, where the pavement is smooth and even, and spot the lit-up 7ELEVEn sign (the inconsistency of the lowercase ‘n’ like a bothersome itch that can never be scratched) and walk through its sliding doors. The fluorescent lights stab at my pupils like tiny knives. I grab the usuals—bag of chips, six-pack of coke, protein bar for Sid—and am weighing up whether to wish the cashier a ‘Good evening’ when he hands me my change and says, ‘Next!’

I step back outside, the rain now heavier. Homeward bound, I reminisce about my recent less pathetic past when I had a good, well-paying job, when my talents seemed appreciated, where I worked hard deciphering complex equations that saved the company millions and was told, on more than one occasion, I was a ‘genius’, an ‘asset’.

Until I wasn’t.

When I was overlooked for a promotion for the fifth time and finally questioned why, I was told I’d never get one because, ‘well, David, you lack the skills for that type of position.’

‘What skills?’ I’d asked.

‘People skills.’

‘And you believe Barry has those skills?’ I had replied, thinking, what planet were we living on? Obviously, a planet where someone like Barry Williams, who was akin to a hollow soufflé served at a county fair—puffed up, airy, lacking any actual substance—could rise to prominence.

‘People really like Barry, David.’

‘The guy thought an algorithm was a dance move!’

I remember the following morning’s walk had started the same as always: hitting the sidewalk at 7:00 a.m. sharp and waving up to Sid who would press his snout against the window until I disappeared from view. I would then execute a right onto Crawford and a subsequent left onto Clifford before pausing to purchase the morning’s Washington Post. This would then be followed by a 13 minute walk to the office, allowing me, if I was lucky, approximately 25 minutes of silence to read the day’s news. That morning, however, I’d only gotten as far as the newspaper stand: The Post had printed a six-page spread of what became known as ‘The Unabomber’s Manifesto’. I’d turned around, headed back home, much to Sid’s surprise, and called in sick that day for the second time in my twelve-year career. I read those pages with a kind of fervor I didn’t know I possessed. It was as if the author had taken fragments of my logic and pieced them together into something grander.

I spent the next three weeks crafting my own manifesto and whilst mine was more of a microcosm than his—focusing on corporate hypocrisy and corruption—it was still a goddamned masterpiece. Sid, my loyal confidant whom I regard as far more intelligent than most people (given that micro-pigs have the cognitive ability of a three-year-old child, that’s saying something) sat next to me, night after night, as I hammered away at my keyboard. After I’d completed it, I read the 32 pages to him out loud, and he’d snorted in satisfaction. How could he not? It was a genius tour-de-force aimed at dismantling the veiled machine of deception that had chewed me up and spat me out like a piece of gristle. I’d even used specifics to punctuate my point: Barry Williams, for one, got a whole section to himself, titled ‘The Man, The Myth, The Corporate Mistake’, the CEO was targeted in another section entitled ‘Synergy is Not a Legitimate Strategy’, and Barbara, his PA who seemed to spend more time coordinating office birthday celebrations than anything of actual value, got her own special mention in ‘The Perils of Prioritizing Personality Over Productivity’.

The following day, I’d printed off fifty-four copies at work, before placing them, one by one, into the mail slots of every employee. Even the janitor got a copy (albeit propped next to his bottle of Windex). I’d then gone home and slept better than I had in years.

The first ripple of chaos broke out at 9:13 a.m. the following morning (and not the kind that hinted at a forthcoming revolution) when Barry had stood on a chair waving one of my manifestos above his head, demanding to know who the ‘unhinged anarchist’ was (a few people glanced my way, but upon meeting my narrowed eyes, looked downwards: cowards, every one of them).

By noon, HR had launched what they called an ‘internal investigation,’ which really just meant Lisa from payroll sent an email around politely asking if anyone had seen ‘suspicious behavior’. At 2:55 p.m. she appeared at my desk flanked by two security guards.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t cinematic. No one cheered or jeered as I was carried out, my cactus stabbing into one armpit and a coffee mug with ‘World’s Best Problem Solver’ written in Comic Sans under the other.

In the end, my manifesto hadn’t provoked sweeping reforms or even a minor ripple of introspection. I was pretty sure that Barry was still spouting his hollow platitudes and that the whole fiasco had been swept under the rug faster than Barbara could plan the next office potluck. And the rest of them? They had likely already forgotten my name, content to remain cogs in the corporate machine, never questioning the absurdity of it all.

Within a month, even Sid’s porcine companionship couldn’t plug the ever-widening chasm of purposelessness inside me. I cycled through all five stages of grief and even applied for a euthanasia appointment. ‘I CAN’T GET A JOB WORTHY OF MY TALENTS, THE WORLD IS ABSURD, AND RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!’ I had written in the little box marked ‘Reason for Appointment.’

‘I’m sorry to tell you Dean, but general disillusionment doesn’t fit our criteria,’ the doctor had said.

‘It’s David,’ I had replied. Feeble-minded fool.

In the months that followed, I spiraled deeper into isolation and despair, feeling emptier than a crushed can of coke.

As I near my apartment now, the rain is, of course, easing. Sid’s snout is plastered against the window, turning the glass into a foggy mess. I climb the concrete stairs, the damp seeping through my jacket. Inside, I collapse into the sagging couch and unwrap his protein bar. Once he’s done, he settles his warm bulk against my thigh waiting for his evening scratch.

The TV rehashes the breaking story, showcasing an unfazed Kaczynski. I stare at the grainy footage of his cabin, the stacks of journals and diagrams, the intricate designs of his creations. So-called ‘experts’ speculate about his motives, his childhood, his brilliance turned to madness. But all I see is a man pushed to the brink by a world that doesn’t understand him.

‘We’re not so different, him and I,’ I tell Sid.

He opens one eye and casts me a glance as if to say, your manifesto is akin to the whiny ramblings of a disgruntled child compared to Kaczynski’s dramatic actions.

The unspoken critique hangs in the air, cutting deeper than I’d care to admit.

‘You’re right, ‘I say.

Sid cracks open his other eye and raises an eyebrow.

‘It’s true,’ I say. ‘I know that I, too, must graduate from idle theory to real-world implications.’

He fixes his gaze on me, his small piggy eyes darkening. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, he asks, ‘So, what are you waiting for, David?’

Melissa Tonkin, hailing from the sunny shores of Sydney, Australia, now lives in The Netherlands. There, she tries to adapt to the unique absurdities of Dutch culture, including their chilly climate. Holding a Creative Writing degree from Griffith University, she is also an academic editor—because who wouldn’t want to spend their days correcting other people’s mistakes? She enjoys life to the fullest with her wife, their lively group of five children, and a chihuahua named George, who, despite his diminutive size, believes he rules the household.