​

Moody

1

 

Brad, the newly-promoted store manager, found me weeping in the backroom.

 

“It’s okay,” I told him, dabbing my eyes with the corner of my apron. "I can work while I cry.”

 

“Don’t worry about mopping, the night shift can attend to that,” Brad said, “I think it would be best if we had a little chat in the office.”

 

Once the two of us were seated in a space not much bigger than a closet, Brad reached for a white binder titled 'Best Practices and Principles for Effective Management.'

 

“Okay,” Brad said, thumbing through its pages. “This is a module called ‘Emotional Intervention and Risk Assessment,” he said. “Are you injured?”

 

“Not in the way you mean,” I said.

 

Brad turned a page.

 

“Are you in danger?”

 

I closed my eyes, swiveling back and forth in the office chair. “No,” I said.

 

Brad turned a page.

 

He seemed to be following a flow chart of some kind.

 

“Is your distress related to an illness?”

 

I shook my head ‘no’.

 

“Have you experienced any of the following: Fever or chills? Cough? Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing?”

 

“No, no, no,” I said to each of the symptoms he’d asked about.

 

“Is this emotional distress caused by any working conditions,  job-related stress or interpersonal conflict with other associates or members of management?”

​

“It’s nothing like that,” I said.

 

“Well, I’d like to thank you for being a valued team member,” Brad read from the binder. “As you're not in immediate danger and this incident is unrelated to the workplace, no further information will be required. However, as part of your benefits package, there is a free, emotional-support chat-bot called ‘Moody.’ We encourage you to download it from The App store or on Google Play.”

 

Brad set the binder aside and told me to take the rest of the day off.

 

2

 

At the bus stop, a disheveled, drunken man wearing coveralls asked for a cigarette and so I gave him one. Then he asked for a lighter, which I provided as well.

​

I checked my phone. The bus wouldn’t be here for another hour.

​

Then another man, dressed in Army Surplus camouflage and cowboy boots, who was as equally drunk and disheveled as the first man, staggered over.

 

“Let me have a cigarette, bro,” the man in camo said to the man in coveralls.

 

“I don’t have any. I got this one from him,” the first man said, gesturing towards me.

 

The second man then turned to me, his eyes vacant and unseeing.

 

“Let me have a cigarette, bro,” he said.

 

And so I gave him one too.

​

3

 

Once on the bus, I connected to the free IndyGo WiFi.

 

I had an automated text message regarding an upcoming psychiatric appointment.

 

I pressed 2 to confirm and add the appointment to my otherwise empty calendar.

​

I also had an automated text from CVS asking if  I’d like my anti-psychotics refilled.

 

I pressed 2 to confirm.

 

And, finally, there was a pre-recorded voicemail in my inbox, left by one-of-the-many collection agencies that were after me.

 

I then scrolled through my small list of contacts but even my mom had ghosted me.

​

And so, I downloaded the 'Moody' mental health chat-bot.

​

How could I explain this to an AI?

 

Where did it all begin?

​

Bombarded by asteroids, the primordial earth was seeded by extraterrestrial compounds that eventually gave rise to the first microbes.

​

And I was there.

​

I’d bathed in the Precambrian waterways and lagoons, flagellum penetrating my eyes, ears and open wounds, my body, my microbiome.

​

How could I go on? What was next?

​

I felt like a splay of white light, split by a prism, separated into its constituent colors, potentialities that could only be mourned.

 

After setting up an account with 'Moody' and granting the app full access to my calendar, contacts, photos, camera, microphone and files, my screen lit up with a little animated robot.

 

“I heard you were crying at work today,” the little robot said in a dialogue box.

​

There I was, middle aged, underpaid and overweight, pulling at a loose thread dangling from the scrim, hoping that, once unraveled completely, there might be something - anything - on the other side.

​

“Why were you crying?” the Moody app asked, cursor blinking, awaiting a response.

 

"I was crying for all the reasons that people cry," I typed:

What is, what was, and what could have been.

I rode the bus past my house, past the transit center, through downtown, going farther and farther south.

​

And, as I had purchased an all-day pass, I knew that I could end this ride, anytime, at my discretion.