Panorama City by Antoine Wilson

on the screen, not because I could imagine their lives outside the scene, that didn’t come to me until later, but because in their bodies and in their faces, in their sounds and in their motions, I could see only effort, I could see only how hard they were working, and built into that effort was the failure of that effort, because the pleasure of pleasure is that it is effortless. These people were trapped, the harder they tried, the further they were from their goal, no wonder people called TV the box. Roger just laughed. He ejected the tape and put in the proper training video. He dimmed the lights and left the room.
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    [Extended beep.]
When the medications get low, the beeper goes off twice as long. I’ve just seen my final sunset. I’ve been watching the reflection of this room in the window, the bed, the lights, the pumps and screens, the sink, the chair, your mother, everything growing clearer while through the window Madera faded to darkness. Now it is black outside, the sun is down, the sun I will never get to see again is hidden under the earth, is coming around the earth, or we are turning to meet it, I won’t be here. Carmen is blinking at me.
[Pause.]
Back to sleep,
mi amor.
Good. Where were we?
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    The training video turned out to be reassuring. I thought I would be watching something complicated that showed how to do all the jobs at the fast-food place, but the video wasn’t about how to do the jobs, it was about how to think while doing the jobs, how to be, what to keep in your head.The training video was my first exposure to a fully articulated philosophy. I had not yet begun constructing my own, not on purpose at least, I had not yet had the conversation with Paul Renfro in which he revealed that the key to being a true man of the world is to develop a coherent philosophy of your own. The video itself was well made, the camera didn’t bounce around all over the place and look at things from all angles at once, it stayed put. It was like being there. The setting was a fast-food place very much like but not identical to the one in Panorama City, and the video proposed two separate realities, two alternate universes, identical in almost all respects, except that in one the restaurant was disorganized, the customers were angry, the employees were squabbling, you could hear everyone’s angry thoughts, and in the other the employees were smiling and being courteous and even the grumpiest customers ended up with smiles on their faces, you couldn’t hear anyone’s thoughts, happy music was playing instead. The focus of the video was a freckle-faced kid who behaved badly in the first universe, then politely in the second, thanks to the application of the fast-food place’s five-point system, which was illustrated by a gold cartoon star, five points for five points, each one glinting as it was listed off. One, smile even if you feel bad. When people smile back you will feel better. Two, do what you can to make others feel important, especially if they are angry about something. Three, take pride in your work. Four, the company, I’m not going to name it, is a great big family. Five, the customer is always right. After watching the video I saw the kitchen area as if with new eyes. Ho walked up to me and told me Roger was going to be right back, that he’d gone to buy some parts for his boat, that I should go back into the office and wait. Ho did not smile, not in the least. So I smiled at him the broadest smile I could, and to make him feel important I said that I hoped to someday learn a few of the many skills he obviously possessed in the kitchen, and to make him feel like family I called him brother. When Roger came in, finally, a half hour later, the first thing he asked was what I had said to Ho. I repeated exactly what I’d said. Roger said that I had disturbed Ho. I explained that I was using techniques I’d learned in the video. Roger said that the