Decay 4

PART VI

Without Elena’s presence, I found academic life intolerable. Students funneling through the university, mostly fixated on networking and credentials, left me cold. Colleagues advocated for “innovation” in teaching, which boiled down to commodifying everything into cost-effective training modules. My final publication, “The Necropolitics of Institutional Compliance,” hammered the notion that universities reduce knowledge to a saleable commodity, draining genuine inquiry of any transformative power. The administration took offense. Some hinted I should move on. I did. I wrote a terse resignation letter, packed up my handful of possessions in the campus office, and left.

I retreated to a small studio apartment downtown, ironically near the corporate district. The swirling chaos of the city—financial behemoths, garish advertisements—assaulted my senses daily. At times, I wandered the sidewalks in the early morning, surveying bleary-eyed workers on their commutes, scanning each face for a shred of empathy. I seldom found any. It was as if everyone moved through life locked in unseen shackles, hunched under the weight of tasks they had never chosen.

I began drafting a new manuscript, expanding on the core themes of my dissertation but letting my rage soak every line. Societies revolve around fantasies of success, synthetic emotions peddled in glossy packaging. Food is chemically tweaked to manipulate the palate; pills are doled out to stifle real feelings; social media is curated to keep everyone anxious yet captivated. In short, I concluded that modern existence has become an elaborate stage show that no one dares exit, for fear of the unknown outside. My notebooks overflowed with references to historical misanthropes—Schopenhauer, Cioran—who had glimpsed the darkness long before.

Day to day, I saw humanity as a swarm of transaction-seeking insects, each grappling for advantage at the cost of the other. I was not naive: we must, after all, buy groceries, pay rent, keep the lights on. So I complied, albeit with bitter resentment. At the corner store, I avoided pleasantries, handing cash to the cashier with minimal eye contact. I ignored small talk from neighbors. My nights were spent reading subversive texts or analyzing economic data that confirmed the unstoppable march of corporate hegemony.

Occasionally, I glimpsed a mother pulling her child close on the subway, or a street musician playing ragged tunes for spare coins. I recognized faint embers of humanity smoldering in unexpected corners. But each time, my cynicism roared back, reminding me that even these acts became part of the spectacle—mom brandishing maternal affection as a performance, musician exploiting pathos to earn a living. I directed my fury at everything—advertising illusions, clickbait headlines, superficial job fairs—painted in the bright colors of success to keep the masses enthralled. The city did what it could to swallow me in its mirages. I refused to be devoured, though it cost me what remained of my peace.

One afternoon, a glossy envelope slipped under my door—no return address, but the stamp read “Skyline Tower: 39th Floor.” Inside, a neatly printed card:

“Victor Mercer,
You are cordially invited to a promotion celebration for Igor Kuznetsov.
Venue: The Aurora Bar, Midtown.
We would be honored by your presence.”

I stared at the card for a long moment, heart pounding against my ribcage. So Igor had risen far enough to host gatherings in exclusive bars. Or perhaps his new firm sponsored it. I felt a tug of conflicting impulses: The teenage friend in me wanted to see him, to revisit the bond that had once bolstered us both. The embittered critic in me scorned any thought of attending. But in the end, curiosity won out. I had to see what he had become—whether the corporate world had transformed him completely or if traces remained of the boy who once sat with me in that dilapidated library, where we imagined lives defined by more than the factory smoke that choked our horizons.

PART VII

The Aurora Bar was perched atop a sleek high-rise, all polished steel and tinted glass. I arrived that evening, stepping into an elevator occupied by three young executives in tailored suits. They chatted about market share, IPOs, stock options—words that reminded me how far from academia I’d drifted. The elevator hissed to a stop on the 39th floor, opening to a shimmering foyer of subdued lighting and upbeat lounge music. I moved into the main hall, scanning for any sign of Igor. Dozens of well-dressed individuals sipped cocktails, exchanging pleasantries in voices pitched just loud enough to signal self-importance. A bored DJ spun a low beat, while a waitstaff glided among the guests with polished efficiency. I felt abruptly out of place in my thrift-store blazer, but I refused to show discomfort. Igor spotted me first. He excused himself from a group, crossing to me with the confident stride of a man certain of his success. In the years since I’d last seen him, he had let his hair grow a bit longer, but his eyes still carried the piercing intensity from our youth.

“Victor Mercer,” he greeted, voice warm enough on the surface. “You haven’t disappeared after all.”

I forced a small nod. “Not yet. Though I imagine you’d prefer it if I had.”

He gave a short laugh, ignoring the jab. “I’m glad you came. It’s been too long. What do you think of this place?” He gestured expansively, as though the dazzling bar and city skyline were personally his to bestow.

I glanced around, noticing the neon reflections dancing along the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Remarkable what budgets can buy,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. “You’ve done well for yourself.”

He shrugged, taking a sip of an amber drink. “When you set aside lofty ideals and engage the real world, you’d be surprised how much you can accomplish. There’s so much potential to be tapped. I always told you that.”

Something in that resonated with the memory of our old debates. “Potential for what? More consumption? More manufactured desires?”

Igor chuckled. “You’re the same, I see: condemnation at every turn.” He waved a hand around the bar. “Let’s not do this here. Later, I’d like a real conversation, for old times’ sake. But first, I have some guests to greet.”

He patted my shoulder, drifting away to another circle of well-dressed sophisticates. I watched him carefully, noticing the effortless way he integrated himself. I remembered how awkward we were in high school, barely able to talk to anyone else about our reading. Now, he seemed molded to this environment, a polished piece of the city’s glossy puzzle.

Left to my own devices, I wandered through clusters of conversation. I overheard monologues about venture capital, investment strategies, expansions into overseas markets.

Occasionally, someone tried to strike up small talk with me, only to falter when they discovered I had no position worth networking over. It was a near-caricature of corporate banality, a living example of everything I had dissected in my essays. People clinging to status, seeking validation in ephemeral successes.

As the evening wore on, I seized a moment to step onto the outdoor terrace. The breeze was cool, carrying the hum of traffic far below. I gazed at the radiant city lights, thinking how Elena would have recognized this spectacle as emblematic of capitalism’s hypnotic power—so bright, yet so empty. I closed my eyes, letting the memory of her voice steady me.

When I returned inside, much of the crowd had thinned, heading off to after-parties or early meetings. I finally managed to corner Igor near the bar, where he poured himself another drink. He looked tired but proud, the faint smirk of achievement etched onto his face.

“Victor,” he said, leaning in. “I hear you’ve locked yourself away downtown, living off your meager savings, writing more scornful essays. Information travels in certain circles.”

“And you keep your ear to the ground, apparently,” I replied, stiffening. “So how’s that working out, being the city’s new star of data manipulation?”

His smile tightened. “You say manipulation, I say focusing behavioral patterns where they naturally want to go. People hunger for guidance. If you direct them properly, they’re happier for it. We provide that service.”

My stomach churned. “Service? Steering entire populations toward half-baked phantoms of desire and self-improvement, so they’ll buy more, watch more, chase more. That’s not service. It’s exploitation.”

Igor set down his glass, eyeing me with an unsettling calm. “Condemn or condone—those are just moralistic categories. In reality, everything is reciprocal. The city demands engineered perceptions. We deliver them. Society thrives on them, Victor. When did you start believing in untainted truths?”

I ground my teeth. “Where does that leave accountability? Don’t you feel any twinge of guilt turning people into data sets?”

He sighed as though talking to a slow student. “People are resources. They can be used responsibly or irresponsibly. I’m choosing the more directed approach, which is more than some can say.”

I remembered how, as teenagers, we sat around homemade charts, believing we’d never let greed define us. “This is ‘responsible’ to you? Building an empire on a prison of perception where the inmates believe they chose their own cells? God, Igor, who are you?”

He shrugged. “I adapted. You refused. That’s the difference.”

A short silence stretched between us, bristling with old anger. Then someone from the board called Igor over. “I’ll be back,” he murmured, leaving me with an exasperated wave of the hand. Resigned, I circled the room, engrossed in my own frustration. By the time the crowd dwindled with the last notes of lounge music, Igor reappeared near a table of empty glasses. His posture spoke of subtle victory, the conquering man surveying his domain.

“Victor,” he said, rolling my name on his tongue. “We should talk properly now, away from all these formalities.”

“Talk, then,” I muttered, crossing my arms. “I’m all ears.”

He glanced around, ensuring no eavesdroppers hovered. “I’ve followed your recent work—insofar as it’s circulated online. You keep rehashing that humanity is corralled by corporate interests, that capitalism chews up human potential. But you still shop in the same stores, use the same utilities, breathe the same polluted air. Don’t you see the contradiction?”

I swallowed a surge of anger. “Surviving in a corrupt system doesn’t mean I endorse it. We can’t simply step outside of society. We exist in the crucible, whether we like it or not.”

Igor took a slow sip, then set his glass aside. “So it’s survival for you, and condemnation for everyone else. Meanwhile, I built something. I formed a firm that models human behavior, not to crush people but to guide them. You call it horrifying, but you have no alternative except moral grandstanding.”

I felt the blood pounding in my temples. “Is that what you call it? Moral grandstanding? Perhaps it’s just the last shred of honesty in a world that wants to be fed apparitions about progress.”

He leaned closer, voice sharpened by the tension between us. “You don’t get it. Morality is the same as everything else—moldable, a means to an end. If you’re too weak to compete, you cloak your failure in moral outrage.”

A deeper pain flared in me. He was no longer just my old friend with a different viewpoint. He was a man whose ideology stood as the polar opposite of everything Elena and I believed. “You’re insulting the only real friendship either of us had,” I whispered, remembering the nights in that old library corner. “You sound like the very men we once despised—those who leveraged power for self-gain, ignoring the cost.”

Igor’s gaze flickered with something close to regret. He inhaled, then responded in a calmer tone, “We were children then, clinging to naive illusions of our own moral greatness. But the real world is not your dissertation, and it’s not Elena’s heartbreak. It’s a battlefield. Overcome or die.”

The mention of Elena cut me like a fresh wound. My fists clenched at my sides, nails biting my palms. “You have no right to speak her name,” I hissed.

He studied me, clearing his throat. “I know she found capitalism monstrous. She called it a viral system. She believed it would devour everything. But she missed how quickly that virus adapts—and how unstoppable it is once you realize it can’t be tamed or killed, only navigated.”

Hearing Elena’s words quoted like that triggered a near-blinding rage. For a moment, I envisioned punching him, letting years of frustration spill out. But my anger mingled with sorrow, tangling me in place. My voice trembled. “Don’t you dare tarnish her memory by justifying your predatory ambitions. She believed in compassion, even after all she saw. You twist it into another commodity.”

Igor drew back, eyes steady. “You can keep worshipping her memory. But I suspect even she would see that clinging to purity is self-defeat. At least I’m trying to shape the world into something. You’re merely railing at it from a corner.”

I pressed a hand to my forehead, trying to quell the dizzy swirl of despair and resentment. Could this truly be my old friend, the boy who once strove for knowledge alongside me? Now I saw a man enthralled by power, indifferent to the moral quicksand he sank into. Finally, I couldn’t bear his presence any longer. I turned on my heel, ignoring his attempt to speak again. I left the Aurora Bar with a sense of something irreparable in me having finally broken.

PART VIII

Numbness settled over me in the days that followed, a bleak confirmation that my worst suspicions about humanity had an intimate embodiment in Igor. We had once braved the stagnant gloom of our hometown, forging a loyal companionship out of battered textbooks and idle afternoon debates. Now, we stood at opposite extremes of the moral spectrum, each outraged by the other’s convictions.

I tried to pour my new wave of anguish into writing. Page after page dissected how corporate culture wasn’t just an economic system but a devouring force, absorbing every human impulse until nothing authentic remained. I argued that the city, the entire modern world, survived by flooding people with illusions—synthetic emotions, curated fantasies, the promise of self-fulfillment if only they would relinquish any lingering doubt. I infused my text with the scorn of a man who had witnessed the final betrayal from his closest friend.

Yet the act felt hollow. Elena’s memory haunted every sentence. She had once said that a shred of compassion might survive the scorched landscape of capitalism. Without her, I had no reason to preserve such optimism. Igor’s triumphant success iced any hope I had for a moral revolution.

I have withdrawn now, not from any personal failing but because it is the only logical response to a civilization that exists as an elaborate theater of false consciousness, where the audience applauds their own captivity. If my disdain has evolved beyond personal sentiment into philosophical position, it is because corporate mechanisms have methodically exploited every fault line in human consciousness. Advertising doesn't merely manipulate insecurities but manufactures them, creating deficiencies where none existed to sell their predetermined solutions. Politicians construct elaborate facades of representation while serving as brokers in the marketplace of power. The populace, reduced to nodes in a vast network of consumption, clutches at synthetic narratives that provide the illusion of meaning within their diminished horizons. Igor, ironically, stands at the apex of that synergy, forging data analytics into an unstoppable push for commercial and ideological control.

I no longer speak to past colleagues. If I need supplies, I buy them online, avoiding the vacant stares of overworked store clerks. The city appears to me as a carnival of cruel distractions, a labyrinth of bright hues that obscure hollow hearts. Everything has become transactional, from the way neighbors greet each other to the way lovers cling, hoping to stand out from the constant churn. In the quiet of my unlit studio, I reread old passages from my dissertation, the lines where I once tried to capture the essence of consumer captivity. It pales in comparison to the reality outside my window. Truth, it seems, can be more savage than any theory. Elena’s gentler arguments occasionally surface in my thoughts, but I have no capacity to carry her half-hope. I’ve lost it with her passing.

I record these experiences as a final testament to how easily one can drift from earnest questing to absolute misanthropy. If I have asked more of humanity, it’s because I once believed in certain possibilities—for moral fortitude, for empathy in the face of exploitation. Yet the more I probed, the more I realized how thoroughly the corporate machine has infiltrated every moral vantage, twisting discontent into profitable niches, swallowing rebellion, exalting cynicism as long as it can be monetized.

Igor and I began side by side, both seeking escape from that grim factory town where our fathers barely clung to meager livelihoods. We found comfort in each other’s intellect, forging a bond that seemed indestructible. But in the end, that very bond burned under the friction of adult ambitions. My insistence on seeing the skeleton beneath society's skin rendered me unfit for its embrace. His talent for adorning that skeleton with seductive flesh made him its celebrated architect. Somewhere in the gulf between those positions, all the love, hope, and camaraderie of our youth vanished.

I cannot conjure false comforts to shelter my wounded spirit now. I know what Igor would pronounce from his gilded tower: that I sacrifice everything for the cold solace of moral conviction. Let him speak these hollow words. I have no desire to convert him, nor to rescue anyone from the labyrinth of corporate sedation. My manuscripts remain half-finished, a flurry of pages that few will read, fewer will accept. Sometimes I consider releasing them online under a pseudonym, but what difference would it make? The city continues its relentless march, adorning itself with each new brand, each product cycle, each campaign that gathers the masses like livestock beneath the slaughterhouse sky.

And so I close this testament with the clear-eyed wisdom that comes from witnessing the full measure of our collective descent. I am, at last, done. Done with the myth of progress that veils our regression. Done with awaiting institutions to redeem themselves—let them find their own salvation if they can, before the tide returns to claim what hubris built. Done with placing faith in humanity's moral compass when it has led us only deeper into darkness. My love for Elena—fierce, unspoken, and luminous—revealed to me that sparks of authentic decency once flickered in the human heart. But in her absence, I see no reason to remain a participant in this grand, decaying theater. Let them face their terrible fates. Let empires crumble under the weight of their own corruption. I withdraw not in defeat but in recognition of a fundamental truth: some battles cannot be won because the battlefield itself is poisoned.

Thus, let these pages stand not as a confession, but as a diagnosis. I have examined the social body, probed its organs, and found them malignant. I have watched the last person I truly could love slip away into the oblivion of disease, and I have seen my only friend discard any pretense of solidarity to champion the new frontier of mass manipulation. My mind is clear, my heart is calloused, and my verdict is final:

Humanity does not deserve witnesses. It deserves only the silence of its own making.

I withdraw, utterly, in recognition that this is the only rational response to a civilization orchestrated by predatory appetites and choreographed delusions.

—Victor Mercer