JPod (28 page)

Part Three
Breakfast Is for Losers

Meeting Today's New Tech Worker

After having worked at my current tech firm for the larger part of a year, I have come to the conclusion that my co-workers aren't so much idiots as they are fellow citi2ens in the thrall of various modes of persistent low-grade autism.

The clinical definition is that they are suffering from mild versions of "pervasive development disorders" or "sensory integration dysfunctions." Asperger's syndrome is one variant that has recently garnered much media hype. People with this sort of condition are known as "high functioning" autistics because they can more or less operate in the day-to-day world. Some people like to think of high-functioning autism as a trendy disease. Wrong. It is not a disease, it's a condition. Most high-functioning autistics resent being talked down to and value their condition. It is not a badge of victimhood for them—it is merely who they are.

Perhaps the broadest way of understanding the world of the high-functioning autistic is to treat all stimuli that impact on the human body not as sensory input but as information bombardment. Most people are able to sift out the day's excess information without ever thinking about it, but to the tech worker exhibiting autistic—okay, let's just say the word:
geek
—to most geeks, a hug is not a hug, it's the physical equivalent of holding a novelty marine foghorn up to the ear and blasting it directly into the central nervous system. When you hug a geek, you're overloading them in a manner they find intolerable. They feel and express shock and revulsion when touched.

Here's a personal example. Low-grade autistics have problems with sensory input, sound being a biggie. My boyfriend, Ethan, is a seemingly average NT (neurotypical), and yet he exhibits a specific autistic variant called hyper acuity. He has a small, specific band of sound frequencies that make him go mental. If I'm in the bathroom with the door closed and Ethan is in the living room watching a Wrestling Entertainment marathon with the volume set on high, all I have to do is clip one of my toenails with a small generic nail clipper and his entire cerebral system shuts down. He screams at me for making "that awful fucking noise." Likewise, Ethan cannot fall asleep if the Braun eight-cup coffeemaker on the floor below us is turned on because, according to him, it makes a specific brain-spiking click every forty-five seconds. I have pulled a chair up to the coffee maker and sat with my ear pressed right up to it. I have yet to hear such a noise. The fact remains that Ethan screams at me to
turn it the fuck of fevety
forty-five seconds.

Here is another example. My cubicle mate John Doe (yes, that is his legal name—a long story) is a complete geek. He finds an immense sense of relief in performing small specific tasks that cumulatively lead to something larger—a textbook prerequisite of the previously mentioned condition called Asperger's syndrome. John is ideally suited to the coding universe, where tens of thousands of lines of numbingly dull code string together to make a hockey puck shoot and score with thrilling real-time physics.

I, too, am a geek and have my own set of autism-related problems. I have a mild version of facial blindness, prosopagnosia. It's hard for me to remember faces and names, and I have trouble telling when someone is either happy or sad. It's not something I'm too thrilled about.

It turns out that most people suffer from prosopagnosia to some degree. Who out there past the age of twenty-five can get through an entire party without faking a name or two? The entire Dale Carnegie method of Winning Friends and Influencing People boils down to ways of mechanically training yourself past facial blindness. It appalls me that people will like and respect you for no other reason than that you give the illusion of remembering their name. Is that all we are in the end—vain lumps of DNA flattered by the cheesiest of mnemonic devices?

More examples will follow. What is important here is at least to become comfortable with the increasingly more apparent scientific fact that what we describe as "character" and "personality" are not so much spiritual or cosmic states of being, but rather, an overall effect created by clusters of overlapping brain dysfunctions.

Witness the universally understood archetype of the class clown. Is he funny and lovable, or is he farther along the personality spectrum of disinhibition? In the middle of the spectrum you have the bulk of society. Move a bit to the left and you find people who are "talkative" or "funny." Move a bit more to the left and there's the class clown. Move along farther and you find a personality who "doesn't know when to shut up." Farther still is someone who talks to himself, or perhaps someone with Tourette's syndrome, which is merely one dimension of disinhibition. Perhaps at the farthest reaches of disinhibition we have the babbling idiot.

Very well. Now then, let's go back to the centre and move a little the other way. We find a person who is "quiet." Then we find people who are "shy." Moving ever rightward, we encounter the "aloof," then the "loners" and then the "spooky." At the far right we have the Unabomber frothing away inside his geographically secluded shack.

My point here is that autistic mini-traits exist within the general population, and that microautism seems to favour people in tech and computer industries.

Here's a much simpler example of geeks and neural processing malfunctions: Has anybody experienced a geek environment in which said geeks wear perfume or deodorant? Chances are no. While advanced microautistics are more commonly men than women, both share a marked dislike of scent. My co-worker Bree was trying to impress this snobby French guy, and she wore a stinky Parisian floral fart perfume to work. She was chased out of the work area with crumpled-up balls of paper and anti-Gallic invective. Likewise, my geek co-workers are unable to process the smell of McDonald's food, and call it the Taint. The worst odour of all is the smell of butter-flavoured microwaved popcorn wafting out of the coffee room. Despite the unspoken ban on said substance, a co-worker nicknamed "Cowboy" popped a bag one Friday afternoon only to return to his desk to find all of his possessions removed. He quickly returned the bag to the kitchen, where he incarcerated it inside three ziplock bags. When he returned to his desk, all of his possessions had reappeared, as if by magic.

Another interesting autistic scenario in my life is one shared by two people I know—Kam, a businessman, and Steve, a marketing executive. Steve and Kam have, in a genuine medical and biological sense of the phrase, no sense of humour. Yes, that's right, they live in a world without laughter. Science tells us that humourlessness is just another offshoot of autism, a type of social disengagement that ultimately ends in a shutdown life.

Likewise, I'd argue that boring people aren't boring—they're hampered by microautism, the clinical term being "lack of social or emotional reciprocity." In a clever twist of fate, when Steve started working at my company, he spoke almost entirely in cutesy cloying management jargon peppered with self-help poop. However, for complex reasons, Steve ended up as a heroin addict. In becoming an addict, Steve acquired both a sense of humour and irony. Steve no longer uses stereotyped and repetitive language. He's fun to have around but, for reasons I can't go into here, has to keep his new personality hidden from most of the people at work.

My co-worker Bree exhibits another form of microautism. Her autism is the lack of social or emotional reciprocity she exhibits in her relentless pursuit of sexual encounters. This isn't just a trashy cable-TV urban sluttery—Bree loses all social engagement skills after she's bagged a shag. Ironically, her way of stopping this microautistic behaviour is through an age-inappropriate relationship with her guy from France, who's maybe forty.

I am not a complainer. I believe that if you identify a problem you should also try to fix that problem. So, for extra credit on this assignment, I have built a hugging machine.

What is a hugging machine? It is an ungainly device made of plywood, two-by-fours and two crib mattresses that's used to apply pressure to the entire body without the sensory overload of being hugged by another human being. It is an affordable, comfortable, non-sexual means of calming a person, and is designed to allow your typical geek to get more productivity from his or her days.

. . .

After almost half a year of stalling, Kaitlin finally finished her hug machine. We were bustling about jPod, installing the final few bolts in preparation for its campus christening party. The last-minute pressure made Kaitlin needy.

"What if nobody comes?"

"Kaitlin, relax. The party will be mobbed."

"What if people come but don't like the machine?"

"Kaitlin, this is a game design company."

"Or what if they want to come, but they don't think they can handle the social pressure of being seen using a hug machine?" Kaitlin has become convinced that everybody in the tech industry is autistic to some degree. It's her new cause.

"Relax."

As an added bonus, after being held by Agriculture Canada for inspection for umpteen months, Cowboy's shipment of dried cola nut powder arrived from the US. He'd perfected a formula for "jCola" and was excited about debuting his creation alongside the hug machine. He'd rented a 1960s beverage machine like something from a roller rink, and the uncarbonated brew looked really, well . . .
refreshing,
swishing away inside the machine's colourless Plexi dome.

"Cowboy, just give me a taste."

"No way. Not until everyone's here and we toast the success of the hug machine."

Was there excitement in the air? No. But a party was much needed after the hours we'd been logging on sprite quest

I spent the morning generating texture mapping for soot, powder burns, blood stains and some awesome particle effects for Ronald's Lair—this on top of my regular job. I pretty much live at work now.

At five we sat around waiting for guests to show up. Who was first to arrive? Mom, who was accidentally invited through the overzealous use of email lists on Cowboy's part. Mom had actually been on her best behaviour in the months following my China trip. I think she's feeling a bit guilty for having Steve sold into slavery, and we still haven't totally mended that fence.

"Hello, dear," she said. "Always nice to come visit your workplace. That ventilation duct over there looks awfully strong. I think I'll go light up a cigarette."

"We cranked up the ventilator just so party goers can smoke."

"You're a thoughtful child."

Sure enough, come five o'clock, geeks began to arrive and mill about, but Cowboy refused to give sneak previews of jCola until six, so people had to fetch their own beverages from the cafeteria machines. This bothered John Doe. "Cowboy, I may not be a member of Van Halen, but I do know one must serve drinks at a party. Therefore I am going to hand out my private stock of Zima." He produced a twenty-four-pack from beneath his desk. 'Yes, Zima—a bold, tasty treat with a spark of arctic freshness. But did you—"John stopped dead and turned a monochrome grey.

"Are you okay?" Kaitlin asked.

"Oh, my dear God."

We turned around to see what he was staring at. It appeared to be a highway construction worker: faded denim, a sun-ravaged face, short black hair and a stocky build, bounding straight towards us. The construction worker barked like a bull walrus protecting his harem, "crow! There's a penis infestation happening here in this ridiculous building!"

Hi, Mom.

John Doe's mother!

"So
this
is where you work." She glowered at the pod. "I see just one woman here. What's your name?"

"Kaitlin."

"Kaitlin, how can you possibly work in a space where there's not even one other woman and the possibility of synchronizing ovulation cycles?"

"Legally, the men's and women's rooms have to be the same size. So it's actually quite nice. And my friend Bree works here, too."

"Wait! I see another female over there smoking."

Kaitlin said, "That's Ethan's mother. Ethan works with your son, too."

"crow," barked his mother, "I need you to introduce me to your comrades."

"Um, Mom, this is Ethan, Ethan's mother, Kaitlin, Cowboy, Evil Mark. Everybody, this is my mother, freedom."

Without asking, all of us knew that "freedom" was not capitalized.

I said, "J°lm never told us his family called him crow."

"It is his name. But I respect his right and need as a male to generate a name that supports his masculinity in the cheerless environment of technology."

Cowboy snorted.

freedom cut him a withering glance.
'
You must be the male slut," she said. She looked at the jCola machine. "What's this—you have your own sugar-water facility here?"

"It's our own brand of cola." I could hear the pride in Cowboy's voice.

"Of all the corporate cysts and welts on the planet, you choose to mimic Coca-Cola?"

Cowboy surprised us. "It's actually a form of subversion," he said. "I located an organic cruelty-free source of cola nut powder, and the sugar came from a Zimbabwe sugar-making facility endorsed by the UN."

"That's still cash cropping."

"One step at a time, freedom."

"Amen," came a male voice from behind me: Kam Fong. A more potentially disastrous clash of personalities was hard to imagine.

freedom asked, "Do you work here, too?"

"Not at all."