Grammarnoir: The wages of syntax, Part 2
GRAMMARNOIR 3: The wages of syntax Part 2
How you’re gonna keep ’em down on the farm
A rat scuttled around the corner at the content farm, an old warehouse that a developer had gotten government money to rehab, with exemption from taxation until the twenty-second century. No windows, and muscle at the door.
“How are you going to get in?” Rebecca whispered.
“Look at the disguise,” I said, shedding my coat to reveal a faded Blue Oyster Cult T-shirt, ragged jeans, sandals.
“You’re wearing that?” she gasped.
“Listens, babs, there was a time, you wore a short-sleeved shirt and a necktie and carried a clipboard, you could waltz into any building in the United States short of the gold depository at Fort Knox. Now, if you dress like this, they think you’re tech support and too unimportant to notice, or you’re the CEO and too important to challenge. What’s your sister’s name?”
“Figures. Stay here.”
I sauntered through the front door. The muscle barely looked up from his sudoku.
On the main floor a room ran the length of the building, a city block, with row on row of cubicles, each one occupied by someone tappng away furiously at a keyboard while at a platform at the other end a guy in a leather vest was beating cadence on a big drum.
The drumming stopped as a paunchy party stepped forward and bellowed:
“Ten-minute break. Anybody spends more ’n ten minutes in the bathroom, spends the night in the box. Anybody brings back food to a cubicle, spends the night in the box. Anybody tries to leave without he turns in his 9,000 words, spends the night in the box.”
They hustled out, and I wandered around, looking at computer screens, ignored by Paunchy and Leather Vest. One wretch had been writing how-to instructions for making toast. In a toaster. Another was cutting and pasting passages from Wikipedia. Then there was one who seemed to be copying and pasting columns, removing the bylines, and inserting the byline of the editor/publisher.
I spotted Amber’s nameplate on a cubicle wall just as they all hurried back to their places.
I bent down and whispered to her. “You. I’ve come from your sister to get you out of here. I know a safe place. Shut up and follow me.”
I straightened up, looked around, and shouted, “There’s a copyright lawyer in the building!”
All of them, as one person, ducked and covered under their desks. I grabbed Amber’s arm, and we moved.
As we walked, casually, down the street to where Rebecca waited, I asked Amber, “How in the name of Sulzberger did you get mixed up with an outfit like that?”
She whimpered, “It paid better than the Huffington Post.”
Next: Sanctuary in the academy