The Worship of Mammon (7)

"Tranche Training"

The story thus far:

Much to the consternation of his new girlfriend Ginny, our writer tries to give his soul to Mammon, the god of lucre. Both our writer and Ginny -- feral anthropomorphic embodiment of our writer's own misogyny wrapped in the appearance of his ex-- are surprised when the corpulent, shark-toothed Mammon accepts his gift of self.

And here, in a thought-form contact center training room located somewhere in the writer's dreams, our writer begins his training in the ways of lucre...

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For most people, initiation into the Worship of Mammon would have involved, at least in the beginning, staying a few extra hours at work. This is ostensibly for what benefits a few extra hundred bucks can give to the family. Junior gets his Dockers quicker, ditto the Marks & Spencer gift cheques for the wife, ditto-ditto the Motorola Razr for the little girl. The number of hours would grow as Mammon's acolytes dangled more benefits in front of you. The money would grow too: not by much, but just enough to keep you looking at that greener pasture. Keep you asking for more office time; keep you staying just a little bit longer...

Meanwhile your ties to the people who love you would erode and you would wake up one morning and wonder just how everyone's drifted away from you. But by then you'd have found it soooo easy to forget your troubles at home by dealing with the troubles at the office. It wouldn't matter much to you by then— the family simply can't understand that your time was always better spent on securing a brighter future for your family... never mind that that future involved amassing a bigger house, a bigger lot, six cars and stuff you don't really need.

But I was a creative. Worse, I was a temporally displaced hippie who was generally satisfied with just a roof over my head, art supplies and a woman by my side. My own initiation, therefore, had to be ...different. Something... creative.

Mammon had already helped knock away that one pillar in '05... my wife.

How long had he and Ginny been at this?

That scene at the diner, the fawning women, his blatant disregard for rules—having the staff at Heaven and Eggs ordering Big Macs from the local McDonald's and consuming the same there—the stupid solar eclipse and the women channeling my exes: it was all a sales pitch. Shock-and-awe proof that anyone so blessed by Mammon would be able to write his own ticket.

I was reminded of this one time... my mom had wanted me to write a speech for some police general as she'd been given that assignment by that selfsame official. I was, of course, resentfully obedient.

“Why couldn't he make the damned speech himself?”

I had pulled on my diplomatic face when The General waddled up the staircase: no sense in making enemies. I'd thought then. My mom crowed about my abilities to The General. He looked the speech over—I was only half done—and made pleased sounds. Then he produced a crisp thousand peso bill and put it in my grubby 20-year-old hands... Mammon must have enjoyed that one.

“Every one has his price, M'boy. And fourteen years ago I bought you. But worry not: I am Mammon. All things are possible through me.” A wink, a smile, and again the flash of sharp, triangular serrated teeth.

Ginny was right. Ham. Showoff.

Now that I'd taken the bait bitten into the hook, he had reeled me in and dumped me in one of his safehouses... in the Cyberpark in Alabang. Specifically, one of the posh orange-and-gray training rooms at (of all places) the HSBC compound. A room labeled Portland, I think. Mammon was going all out to get me up to speed on how he got things done. Self-appointed god-wannabes like Dave Koresh, Charlie Manson or Shoko Asahara could have used pointers from this guy. L. Ron Hubbard had been awake during the lecture, obviously: Scientology was alive and well when the Branch Davidians, Manson's extended Helter Skelter family and Asahara's death cult were pretty much ...dead in the water.

Anyway Ginny wasn't with me in the lecture room. She had probably seen this part of the procedure, or she wasn't interested. She had retired to the ground floor cafeteria to feast on... what did she eat when she wasn't consuming my anger and disappointment at women in general? And did it count as food when my disappointment encompassed the rest of the human race? It didn't matter. I wasn't her only project and likely she was off tormenting some poor sap who'd just been given the boot because he was uncool or otherwise inadequate.

Today's subject-- complete with flash animated presentations projected via LCD device on a white screen-- just what mammon thought of creatives like yours truly...