[05/06/2026]

[FICTION]

Ceremonic

by Derek LaPorte

Stupidity is the fine art of all futures.

That is our company motto which hangs from the pencil-wounded ceiling, here where the graphic-tee’d God flicks triangle footballs through manicured L’s, here where we gather for the office retreat.

It's a retreat, an escape from all that's not office, Lindsay says. She's the COO, marker on our whiteboard world that scrapes residue truth from metrics. Data shapes the doing, she says. She talks of our purgatory: enough success to be the best option, not enough success to eliminate the need.

She says she is not the licked finger that detects the wind's direction, but the pointed finger towards Perry, our CEO.

Lindsay's hair is frozen in wildness, her body compressed by a pancake-brown pantsuit. Her right arm is clad in watches, each a reminder that we are on her time.

The mountain cabin which hosts the retreat has an onsen that overlooks the snow globe world. Lindsay squeegees sweat from her cleft and says Perry will not be attending IRL. He will be Zooming in. Through a recorded message, he apologizes and says we are in good talons. 

Secretly, I listen to my voicemail: It is the Shaman, the one who wears a mint dressing gown and shakes fossilized fronds through incensed air. He is praying over my children back home. And hearing their voices, I, I miss them. And I can't wait to see them again, so long as they are better. So long as the shaman can heal their melancholy.

Lindsay lights our drinking water on fire because she says only the thirsty know the value of water.

She commands us to consume forever-chemicals, to taint our blood and ensure bodies too toxic for burial so that we may be entombed in human shellac.

Lindsay has Bobby, our PikeHead, flick his glowing peridot-fitted Prince Albert. The diode spatters to life beneath the belfry: 4,884,3… something becomes 4,884,3… something less. We wait as bells toll. Then: $317 billion -> $317.2 billion (.)-(.)

We applaud.

Whispers in the crowd. Report: an error… a family, a car, driving home. They should not have been there.

Lindsay weeps, eulogizes with words like “unfortunate” and “prayers.” Says: the fault is, however, partially theirs.

Bobby questions it, questions our system. Our product.

HUSH. Blood is a modest price, she says. It is the stream that flows and flows, directionless, until we give it a direction. OUT!

She points at chemical residue blasted like graffiti on cubicle walls. Beauty goes without report, she says. See that? 

That is our love language.

We stare at Bobby's flaccid nuclear horseshoe and he claims he'll never be able to get it up again.

Another voicemail from the Shaman: the melancholy persists. He recommends: new children.

I'm inconsolable. No one consoles me.

Lindsay says, Time for the team-destroying exercise: bobbing for apples.

But one apple, she says, is a grenade.

Bobb bobb bobb bobb bobb, explosion.

I can almost hear my children singing:

Bobby bobbed and bit and boom and blotted the Board with bits of Bobby's bod.

The Board smiles and Lindsay applauds Bobby's bod bits and picks the peridot prick piece shrapnel protruding from the pedestal.

Then, she guides us through stages of grief like a mother. She says corporate grief is the inverse: acceptance, bargaining, anger, then denial denial denial. Like the Egyptian river, she jokes. It feels good to laugh again.

Bobby's position is open, she declares.

I apply.

She hands the applicants ritual Letters of Intent.

Whose intent aligns the best?

We etch on stone to immortalize errors.

One by one: misspellings, crushing failures.

I dissolve into flow, thinking how the stone knows the words first.

Etch and etch to reveal the stone's murderous intent. We simply show it.

I think about my children. How absence as an abstract is gentler than witnessing their sad faces every day.

Make it all abstract.

And I think that though tears dry, eyes always remain ready.

I win. My intent was full-bodied and viscous.

I'm coronated with a crown of Bobby's teeth. The Liasson passes a needle through my urethral opening and Lindsay adjusts the sacred Prince Albert. As she holds me tightly in her hand, she says we must keep this professional at all times. Yes, of course, I say and she kisses the tip while I stare at her many-watched arm. All our time is not ours, somehow slurped up.

My pants are still down when Perry zooms in, appearing on diodes in denim pattern-matching. His mic is not on, or there is some technical difficulty with his computer. He flails his arms and mouth madly in silence. Wet wet silence that fingers our ears until finally his voice arrives, booming, unearthing the foundation: EVERYTHING WORKS FOR YOU OR AGAINST YOU. Silence again. Then: warthog head explosion emoji

He waves goodbye.

We nod.

Another voicemail from the Shaman: the new children are born. What to do with the old?

I reply: whtever. don't bother me w/ such things.

I'm told by Lindsay: the dick-ring glows for five seconds after each flick.



We board the company car.

We glide down avenues of necrotic hashrates.

We drive by night, in a void so thick that we vanish and are vanished.

But I light the way by flicking my dick once every five seconds.

Flick.



Flick.



Flick.



Flick.



Flick.

And we never question if we'll make it home.

Because knowing the way, for us,

that is enough.

DEREK LAPORTE is a writer and game designer in Los Angeles. Find him on Instagram at www.instagram.com/presentuntilabsent/.