Attack of the Corporate Overlords: Chapter 1

A queer sci-fi story set in near-future Toronto, when corporations have gained control of the people.

Yonge and Dundas was one of the busiest intersections in the city, known for its blinding fluorescent billboards and the mishmash of shanties that had begun cropping up after the Great Fuel Crisis of 2025. As non-renewables became scarcer and the wealth divide grew, traditional gas-fueled cars had been replaced by lower-cost bikes, enabling more people to get around and transforming the once semi-orderly two-lane streets into chaotic streams of machines weaving in every direction. 

Violet kept her head low as she snaked her way through the throngs of fast-moving people, many passersby so numbed out that they didn’t even notice her shouldering her way past. Most everyone these days – save for the wealthy elite – worked at least two jobs to barely make ends meet, and the deadened reactions were commonplace. If they weren’t desensitized by exhaustion, they most certainly displayed the listless demeanor of an Attentrix high.

Reaching the entrance of the factory, Violet waved her chipped hand at the sensor, walking through the whooshing metal doors and into her third shift of the day. It had been two weeks since she’d had a day off – as the sole provider for herself and her mother, there was a strong pressure to work as many days as possible, a sentiment further ingrained by the popular axiom and pharmaceutic slogan “awake is aware, rest makes despair”. Making her way through the enclave, she fought off a yawn, not wanting to draw attention to her fatigue lest her supervisor see it and call her to task. 

Just as quickly as the announcement had started it was over, replaced by the familiar Attentrix jingle. As if on cue, Violet’s fellow workers each grabbed the bottle of pills on their bench, tossing capsules into their mouths in time to the energetic tune. FPC was a mega-corporation with thousands of divisions across the world, and ads for their various products running on the work floor were routine. Nobody seemed to care, more concerned with keeping their jobs than amy potential impact of subliminal messaging. 

Attentrix was known for “encouraging laser focus,” a PR-softened way of describing how its users developed a cold and programmatic fixation on their output, whatever it may be, often to their own detriment. Attentrix’s main claim to fame was its ability to mimic the effect of a full night’s sleep, which it did by effectively shutting off the parts of the brain that registered the need for rest. 

Violet twitched her nose, trying to shake the itchy feeling of withdrawal. In spite of the company-subsidized rates, she had been unable to afford her Attentrix refill this month. She sighed, following the red beacon on the floor to the empty break room. Grabbing a cup, she pressed the double shot button on the coffee machine and watched intently as the dark liquid poured out. It smelled burnt, probably an indication of the machine’s dire need for a deep clean, but the flavour didn’t matter to her – she always downed the drink like a tequila shot, as if she couldn’t feel the scalding heat. Coffee was never as good as the instant, clean hit of Attentrix, but it would have to do. 

As she walked the short distance to her station, she caught the eye of her neighbor on the assembly line. The woman stared straight at her, but it was clear she wasn’t seeing her. The vacant haze was the most common side effect of the popular drug, plaguing its users with a subdued look that suggested they were checked out. At the peak of the Attentrix high, you were altogether unresponsive to outside stimuli, driven entirely by the need to be productive, a one-track-mind sponsored by capitalism. Outside you looked like a zombie, but inside you were firing on all cylinders, no need to stop. Violet noticed a number of other workers nearby in a similar state as they buzzed through their assemblies, lamenting the fact that she couldn’t feel the collective euphoria alongside them. 

By the time Violet registered the next hourly chime, it was shift end. She gave a heavy sigh, allowing herself to feel the first bit of exhaustion that she’d been staving off for the past 18 hours. She gathered her belongings, falling in line with the rest of the people who’d finished alongside her as they marched single-file out the front door. Violet couldn’t help but notice the blinking red eyes of the numerous security cameras that dotted the walls, like tiny mechatronic versions of the pigeons that had once inhabited the city in droves. The same red eyes followed her along the remainder of her route home, secured to signposts, storefronts, and any other available surface, ensuring that every square inch was under the watchful eye of FPC surveillance. 

The unintended benefit of being too broke to afford Attentrix was that Violet was more observant. Without pharmaceutical stimulation, she could be with her thoughts, leaving her with the faculties to reflect on things. This often encouraged a deep depression that she didn’t care to sit with, as she realized that the vast majority of people were hooked on the drug as an escape from a life that had been engineered to keep them down, which in turn incurred further debt, forcing longer work hours and necessitating the stimulant’s use. 

She knew in these moments that this cycle had been intentionally designed by major corporations to keep people in check. With the aid of the FPC-proclaimed “miracle supplement,” Attentrix addicts often went weeks without sleep, drying up into empty-eyed husks. Without sleep, they became untethered from themselves, no time for the brain to regenerate or form new neural connections. Over time, these people began to lose their spirit, abandoning friends and family in favour of full-time non-stop work. They were the perfect employees, able to continually produce without the pesky human need for rest. The system worked flawlessly: Executives continued to get richer, everyone else was worked or doped into a state of powerlessness. Naturally, research on any potential downsides of Attentrix was non-existent, allowing people to remain blissfully ignorant of any harm it might cause. 

The sky was beginning to lighten, shades of orange and pink painting a muted watercolor as Violet reached her door. The small hut had been originally made of corrugated sheet metal and plywood and had been fortified over time with brick and insulation to protect against the wildly fluctuating weather. It was wedged between other huts of similar size near King and Bay in what used to be the TD Centre courtyard. She authenticated the front door lock with her chip then took the two shallow steps down through the reinforced door, entering into a small kitchen that was still warm with the heat of the oven from dinner the night before. Violet navigated the tiny space with a deft silence, careful not to wake her mother as she made her way to her bunk. She quietly eased out of her work clothes and into bed, immediately dropping into a dreamless sleep.

Violet awoke to the distinct buzzing sensation in her wrist that signaled her first shift alarm. She sat up slowly, taking in her surroundings. Though she’d had only 6 hours of sleep, she felt more alert than she’d been in months. Something in the air felt… off, but she couldn’t figure out why. She blinked the thought away as she got dressed, it faded further into the background as she brushed her teeth and made breakfast. She parted the curtain that separated the kitchen from the den area and gave her sleeping mother a kiss on the forehead. Her mother slept most of the time, chronically exhausted due to long-term use of Vigilense, Attentrix’s destructive predecessor.

She stepped into the late morning activity of King Street and was immediately hit with a sharp wall of smell that carried the unmistakable tang of blood. The sidewalks were littered with grisly masses. Violet recoiled, her stomach churning with bile as she tried to comprehend what could have happened. A sickly squelching noise sounded from behind her and she turned around just in time to see a washed-out Attentrix addict explode, a heavily armored creature with six legs bursting forth from its remnants. The human-sized horror turned as if responding to a magnetic pull, taking off north at surprising speed. 

Without realizing it, Violet had flattened herself against her front door and ducked down below the stoop. Nobody else on the busy road seemed fazed in the slightest at the gory scene as they continued to go about their business, immersed in either digital or medicated hallucination. She watched in horror, completely frozen in place as people stepped around or even over the skin suits. Blood-stained metamorphoses could be heard at varying distances as more insectoids emerged from their human cocoons, all heading in the same northerly direction up Bay.

A bright yellow shimmer caught her eye, the sparkle drawing attention to a waving figure on the other side of the street. Violet looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, then looked back at the figure, who gestured at her before ducking behind a low brick wall. Completely shaken by what she’d just witnessed, Violet made her way through the oblivious horde and toward the stranger without hesitation, something that her grounded self would never consider doing. Caution finally began to prickle at the back of her mind just as she rounded the wall, her senses screaming at her to stop right before she tripped into an open hole.