Madeline

@scenicsystems.bsky.social

26 Followers 30 Following

28, she/her. Powerful woman-adjacent artifact My website: scenicsystems.neocities.org Discord: scenicsystems

text that reads: "The new job. The interview was a shock to my systems. I was nervous, but who isn’t. They sat me in a square corner office, lit only by a single overhead incandescent bulb (the only one I’ve seen in a building full of fluorescents) and the soft glow of sunlight through shut blinds. They spent the first five minutes fiddling with the damn bulb, screwing and unscrewing it, swiveling the lamp head, trying to make it stop flickering, before ingenuity struck and they opened the blinds instead. “They” is strictly plural here: the interviewers were two men dressed in their Sunday best, squeezed behind the other end of a conference table so wide that it struck me with confusion how they even got it inside the door. I had perhaps sneaked into the liturgical east of the building, my accomplices the acolytes. Alas, the altar was sacrificial, and what proceeded was a grilling as would give Huītzilōpōchtli pause for concern. They volleyed question after question over such miscellanea as paper dimensions and workman’s comp laws. The highlight was one that asked, “how much have you worked?” I replied “eleven years”, before they rebuked: “not how long, but how much.” I begged forgiveness: how do you measure work in any unit other than time? An hour and half later, they welcomed me to the job and commended me on my resilience. I smiled and thanked God for the first true compliment of my life."
AI-generated recreation of Mark Rothko's "Sacrifice".