[Aug 15, 2002. IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTE: This FICTIONAL account details the first-person experiences of one mythical character, who we shall call "Tomaas Andraeson". It is heavily influenced by the album "Operation Mindcrime", by the band Queensryche. But, like Operation Mindcrime, it is also a FICTIONAL account. What will happen to these tragic characters in the end? Maybe I'll write about it next time I get around to doing more fanfic. Peace.]

I just lost a lot of trust tonight. But I still have a tiny bit of it leftover, somewhere in my soul. It's not going to come out easily though.

The timing was just too good. The attempts to snap my already manic nerves too well placed. I've been getting played with by a whore. If I am right, she used to call herself a programmer at a company I worked in.

She turned way to smart, way too fast. She tried to impress me with her coding skills earlier this week. I took ONE look at what she did, and thought, "Man, this former 'coworker' must be on some mind drugs."

She was never laid off by the company. She may have even been kept on as a "consultant" on retainer. I'm just throwing out wild guesses.

It is going to be VERY, VERY hard for some of us guys to trust women for a while. A long while. Because if I am right, I have been getting played with ever since the time before the day I was hired.

She would go out alone with the CEO at lunch. I believe she also knew the VP fairly well.

It made all the rest of us jealous, but we would never say anything. It made me nuts. I thought she *kind of* liked me. But when I was getting too good at figuring things out 1.5 years ago, she cranked the poison on high. It turned out to be too high. I was showing cards that said suicide. So they cranked it down, and offered numbers I could call for "help".

But I found my own help. Using my own skills.

Then, a week later, after I had already found my own help, they had to crank the screws down again. A sexual harrassment complaint was filed against me on her behalf. They told me she didn't want it to happen, but I couldn't even talk to her myself. They didn't want me to tell her I was sorry for what I had said in an email that was supposed to remain private.

It was all mindfuck all along. She was the "hard to get" one around the office. She didn't believe in having children. She didn't know how to code all that well, but she could play along well enough to keep her job. As long as you were nice, and didn't defy the people in authority, she would talk nice to you.

She would never meet with her own peers alone. Though I tried occassionally, I could never once convince her to ride to lunch with me when no one else was in the car. I thought, "Why is she so afraid? Has she been conditioned in her childhood, or something."

Wow.

After the layoffs, we finally found out, after everyone else had been thrown away, that this special girl was gone. After the weekend was over. Her vacation was ending just in time for the layoff. WHO are these people?!?

I don't think I know them very well. At all. Not nearly as well as I thought I did. But I could still be wrong, and go into work on Monday to find that I still have a place to sit. If that is the case, I will do what I've planned. I will take my seat, and I will do my job.

If I find that the office is locked, and my keycard no longer lets me in, I will have been called on my bet. I don't have a job anymore, and I might need to find a new one. At least they don't have my personal belongings haven't been lost. They are in my car. Locked. In the trunk.

Is somebody going to vandalize my trunk tonight? Is someone I once referred to as a corporate officer going to pay someone to vandalize my car tonight? I strongly doubt it.

Ok, I'm fucked up. I'm a maniac. I know it. I've been one all week.

I just cannot trust women for a while anymore.

She just wouldn't ever talk to any of us normal programmer guys alone. She would talk to us, and go to lunch with us in groups. Sometimes. When we behaved ourselves. I never knew this game of mindfuck could reach these levels.

How many other women out there are like her?

Ok, I know I'm ranting. This is going way too fast for some people, because I'm not clearly explaining my logic. I'm just spouting off like a doofus.

Laugh at me. It's better than what she was doing. She had calmed me down via the email thing. She was DEVASTATED by the layoffs. She might even be starving. How was this woman, who never showed her face in the office after vacation, couragous?

I'll tell you what I'm theorizing. Her paid vacation never ended. It was going to go on for a month or two or three, as long as they could keep her services on retainer.

Maybe she never once fucked the CEO. Maybe she never once fucked the VP. Maybe she was just talking to them during lunch about what was happening in the business world. Either way, she would never talk face to face with her peers alone. It really makes one wonder what she was really being paid for.

I'm sorry. I'm out of it tonight. I thought my insanity trip would be ending when I left the office. But it didn't. It continued.

It's still going.

When I told her exactly what was going on in the office from my viewpoint, because it was fairly clear to me that even if she couldn't trust me to stop by her house (she had some reason to fear me), she had started tuning me out already. She wasn't able to listen to what I had to say.

All she did was start screaming, uttering acronyms like '???? WTF *are* you up to?'

But I when she sent the email, I had already tuned her out for the day. I would come back and discuss calmly what was going on later this evening. She told me they would weep. What I didn't realize until much later was that she was probably in on the deal, and had been for a long, long time. Even if she didn't know it at first.

Maybe the CEO never touched her at all. Probably not. I didn't sense any guilt from him when I looked him in the eyes. They probably just hung out together discussing business while the rest of us went to a different restaurant. She still used Linux though. Gotta give her credit for that.

I still cannot hate her. Isn't that nuts? After all we've been through.

I'm not going to be talking to her for a long, long time though. And after I started barfing up the past at her, as well as the recent present, she was in panic behavior. Panic inducing behavior. WTF?

I quote: "WTF is up with this Thomas Anderson thing???"

If she is truly too dumb to figure it out, then I gave her FAR more credit than she deserves. I think she's smarter than this. I haven't received any more emails from her ever since I started subtly weaving around her guilt. Yes. The people on the outside are still in contact with the people on the inside.

I haven't yet withdrawn the offer I gave to her for a free meal at my place if she gets hungry. No strings attached.

She still hasn't responded to any of the mental dupe dope I dished at her. Maybe she's doing exactly what she should do, and sleeping during the night like I should be doing.

But I still have my memories, and I just cannot trust her. She subtly exhibits the behavior of a prostitute. (i.e. irresistable attraction to money, even if she doesn't want to admit it to herself) Even if she's never slept with anyone at the top, things can be far more subtle.

She would talk with the CEO alone. She would talk with the rest of us in groups. NEVER alone. (Except for one, and he's a married man. She would even hang out at his house. I really don't know what to believe now. If they still hang out together, I hope I'm not told.)

Ms J, if you want to talk to a raving psycho who has lost his mind, you do not rev him up with SHOUTING and ALL CAPS. You treat him as if he is sane, even if he is not sane. You don't ask him WTF this Thomas Anderson thing is. If you are truly the strong woman you once claimed to be, you know how to use google.

Type "Thomas Anderson" in. Nope. I'm wrong. Google doesn't work. I just tried it. Too common a name. She has forgotten the movie I'm talking about. Other people might have as well. Thanks for bringing me back to reality, Ms. J. It's the lead character in this movie. The Matrix. I have it on my shelf.

Yeah, anyway. She's been telling me there's going to be big weeping at the top when all the CEO's realize, how deeply they've been swindling us all. Well, she has been laid off by them. Can't blame her too much. But I'm still willing to accept the very real possibility that she was never laid by them.

But now, I just can't trust this kind of talk from someone who used to go to private lunches with them.

I looked in the eyes of the CEO on Friday. Myself. first hand. I said inside my aping insanity, this is not a bad man. He is showing concern for me. He wants to help me, but he can't. I have calmly said that I will be fine. I will go home and take care of myself. And I will get some sleep.

Same thing goes for the VP she used to eat lunch alone with every now and then.

For what it's worth, I'm now thinking a little more calmly, and I'm thinking none of them meant any wrong, and none of the bedroom games I'm imagining are real. It's just funny.... the appearances these things give. It's a strange scent in the air.

I'm relearning to believe that everything she said to me is true, and that her PHP skills are now far beyond anything I would have imagined her to know while she was working in that dead old building. She is right though.

The corporation is crumbling. She just doesn't yet realize what a nasty little role she herself has had by the mere appearances she has given off when she was living amidst all this swindling and soothsaying.

They're dead at the top. They can't hear this. They don't understand people. They only understand money.

If I cannot find women who appreciate my attention, I'll just turn them away, like I turned hur away tonight. I'm tripping way too hard now. Time to take lithium, and go to bed. I've confessed my stupid sins of lust in the past. Lust for someone who no longer with the company I work for, and has moved on to higher places. She deserved to go. It was limiting her.

Here's your dope children, as promised. I'll be listening to it. Will she, or will she believe I've become too crazy.

Now it is my turn to show the world that I am sane. I'm just going to appreciate what I've got in life. There might, or might not be, a woman somewhere near downtown, who will be more than willing to show me a little love of money. And if she loves money, then she can touch my thing. But that will be after a couple more paychecks. Gotta rechange the bank account.

Free meal offer. Still open. But I'm trippin to hard for her. Time to condition my mind for the next phase of corporate profits. How much are my lastest grant of options worth now?

Peace.

I'm livin in an illusion, and I need to come down from it. But she is not the person to help bring me down. Even though I once wanted her worse than anything in the world.

One person gets a gift certificate tomorrow. $20, to be honored, as promised. But I'll sleep first.

Listen.

I'm calm, and I'm high as a kite, and I'm staying around my apartment tonight.