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The Divisive Intensive: A Representation of The Misjudged Body

Chapter 1: The Image Surgery

“The video camera. Isn’t she beautiful? Here…take another look.” Smith peered down the lens to see the object, some undefined figure of course femininity drawing him in. Like a wound, She reminded him of his own mortality, both repulsive but strangely fascinating.

“What…the girl?”

“No, the eyepiece. Isn’t it just divine?”

Smith leaned back. It was day eight of the Psychosis Factor, the new Reality TV show to hit SyndiNet 27. Contestants would be monitored twenty-four hours a day, and The Syndicate would package their exploits like a bad perfume. This was the show’s first series, but Smith knew it had always been there, like a bad smell, forever haunting the very fabric of the TV schedules. He looked back at Denton.

“Yes…yes I suppose it is.”

Denton was the kind of man who aged every time he spoke. Those deep eyes always seemed to be on the cusp of discovering some great truth that could never be spoken of. Like language didn’t have enough words to convey its magnificence. Denton made that majesty…that mystery…his own. He and Smith had known each other for years. They were together when they joined the Syndicate, when they threw their briefcases into the river and watched the findings of conventional society turn to mush, forever merging and deteriorating into disorder. They were together when they danced with the swords and took their oaths, when they had done everything that The Syndicate required of them to become Architects of The Psychosis Factor. But that was where Denton and Smith were different. Whereas Smith considered running the show as just a job, Denton considered it an honour, an obligation.

“Do you know why the video camera is such a beautiful thing?” Denton asked, in that peculiar rhetorical way of his.

“Why’s that?” Smith replied.

“Because the video camera organises the world in such a way that other powers could not possibly hope to achieve.”

“I always thought the camera was like the gun. Only safe if you were behind it.” Smith quipped.
“My dear friend. Not at all. Why, the military and the media are nothing alike. Where the military was built for destruction, the media was built for creation. What can the soldier do with his tools? How can he impose himself on society?”

“By shooting…and doing all those other things that soldiers do.”

“Exactly. When the soldier imposes his will on a people, his efforts take immediate effect. But on the extradition of this will, the act of creation and destruction occur simultaneously. In short, when the soldier kills, the subject he is trying to represent is removed through the very actions that defined it.”

Smith looked at Denton warily. It was true what he said, that soldiers guns were getting smaller. He’d read about rogue attempts to re-nationalize military service, and how the soldiers became bored and disaffected because there was nothing to do but clean their guns.

“But the video camera is not at all like the gun. And we not at all like the soldier.” Denton continued. “When the artist shoots his subject with the camera, that subject is captured, not destroyed. As artists, you and I can impose our will secretly, and define, rather than destroy a culture.” Denton looked through the plate glass that separated the studio from the house that held the contestants. He pointed to the girl that Smith had looked at through the camera lens.

“That woman, and everything she represents, is everything that The Syndicate represents. We can make her do anything we wish. Through the video camera, we choose what the audience sees, and more importantly, how they see it. Which parts of this girl’s life do we show, and which parts do we edit out? In our choices, we control that girl, who is no more than an actor in a play, or a character in a videogame. And we are writing the script, right here, right now.” Denton gave Smith one of those old looks that showed he knew how The Syndicate worked. Like the camera, he was intrinsically in the world…but not part of it.

Smith glanced down the lens once again, framing the girl in medium close up. Yes. That was his terminology, the radio chatter of real warriors, free from all the pomp and audacity of the soldier who wore his body armour like a comfort blanket, and used his assault rifle like an air guitar. Suddenly, Smith felt a sense of power which helped him understand what Denton had said. He felt like a surgeon, analysing the subject, dividing and reproducing it, through an infinite range of viewpoints, his view, The Syndicate’s view, and the audience’s view.

“My dear Smith, this reminds me of our hacking days. Ah, we saw how people lived back then. Such memories. Well, here’s to the audience, I suppose” Denton mused.

Smith turned the camera off. He turned to face his old friend, his name, DENTON etched on his soul like a nameplate above the office door. He smiled. “Here’s to the audience.”

Chapter 2: The Feminine Fortress

“To you, the video camera. Did the impious hand of man create your eye of metal? Did they interpret the materials of your being as a way of delivering themselves into the world? From within that obsequious hollow, do you yearn to create merely in the name of your master? Or do you, the camera…hate us?”

The camera replied with a tilt down and rapid zoom. Cynthia returned the glare. By now, she had learned not to interpret the camera as a substitute for presence, but instead deal with that presence as a thing in and of itself. She looked deep into that veiled dome for any signs of life. Could it be that The Syndicate had created sentience within? Perhaps somewhere, just somewhere, beyond the infinite facets of glassy representation, hid the ultimate truth, the true woman. She saw her reflection in the lens as it focused upon her visage, as if dividing the room in two like some impious confession box.

Cynthia had been on the show since day one. Being an independent fashion photographer, she knew how the shoot could capture a woman’s ‘true beauty’. Cashing in on the cheap airbrushings of vain excess, she’d sold beauty like silicone tears. Hers were the type who at The Awards, would cry hard when they lost, and cry even harder when they won. The Psychosis Factor would be no different. But her game had turned sour, and it felt strange being on the other side. The show played host to an equal number of men and women, all vying for the possession of the mysterious prize, awarded only to a single contestant at the end of the show. The audience would vote each week for their favourite competitors, and those with the fewest votes would be deemed unworthy of the award.

There were three contestants sitting on the sofa in the seating area. Like parasites, they seemed to be feeding on the very fabric of that couch, clinging onto the house as if it were their livelihood, their claim to existence. Normally, Cynthia would brush these vacuous attention bugs into the gutter, or at least sweep them under the newspaper columns of the lesser hacks. The faint murmur of their musings wafted gently in her direction, as if the estrogenic egos of screaming eunuchs and vagrant chemical girls contaminated the airwaves with their opinions.

“What’s up with you then?”
“Some nark’s gone an’ hid me ‘air straightners”
“I used them this morning.”
“Well I need ‘em now. Whatchoo done wi ‘em?”
“I don’t know.”

Cynthia walked into the room. She looked at those two girls, those two excuses of consumerist exhibitionism. Their voices drew her attention to their mouths, those oily shimmers of deep purple. It seemed to her that the whole body was contained within those details. That their lips were somehow constitutive of the entire representation of womanhood, irrevocably stained with the blood of capitalist endeavour. The conversation appeared to Cynthia as one long, uninterrupted stream of meaningless data, scrambled through the effects of the ever-present glare of the camera.
One of the girls turned to face her.

“What you looking for?” She said.

“Nothing really.” Cynthia replied.

“You ain’t stole my ‘air straightners ‘ave you? Nah, you don’t look the type. Ya never wear makeup, never dye your ‘air, never play with the boys. What are ya?”

How easy it would be to get into an argument. Cynthia thought about tearing this empty headed girl to pieces with her views. With a few sentences, she could destroy her entire world. “I never wear makeup because I want to be in control of myself. You couldn’t possibly imagine what’s being done to you,” she muttered.

“What? I am in control of my life. I can make men do whatever I want.”

“And how can you be in control, when the signifier of femininity is at the mercy of male presence? When the very mediums used to represent womanhood are run by men, how can you achieve autonomy as an independent being?”

Cynthia thought of Chemtex. The world’s leading ‘Recreational Pharmaceuticals Company’. Their seal of approval was the same seal on every girl’s lips, every eyelid closed from caked layers of mascara. Chemtex could do pretty much whatever it wanted. It was so big that policing it from outside was impossible. Instead, the corporation was regulated by internal investigation departments, and Cynthia new they’d turn their backs on a problem if the price was right.

“Shaataap you! Stop acting so deep!” the girl snapped, pulling Cynthia out of her dream, or rather, pulling her out of one dream and into another. These poor women. What were they but the actors of a thousand scenarios, a thousand pleasures, and a thousand deaths? But as long as they were on The Psychosis Factor, they were under the control of The Syndicate. Cynthia felt the influence trying to break her down, and wandered the garden for a few hours, pacing like a caged beast. She felt like she was merely part of the house, an object rather than an occupant.

She smiled to herself. Yes, that was it. Her body was a fortress. A fortress to be defended. Defended against the stupidity of the vacuous girls, and the scowls of the hungry men. But above all, she would defend herself from the cameras, and the hive of interpretations which lay behind them.

Chapter 3: The Rating Game

Like a dull siren, the argument corroded the very walls of the house. Smith could hear the sharp mumbles reverberate off the plate glass window. Someone had stolen the hair straightners for the last time. Smith looked back at that incomprehensible face that belonged to Denton. Was he enjoying this? Was this more than just an honour?

“Do you know what sustains these people? What keeps them here?” he asked. Smith knew he was being tested. Although they’d both joined the Syndicate at the same time, it always appeared as if Denton was his mentor. Just like the Syndicate, it was like he’d always been there.

“The promise of fame, and the excessive parading of a blind ego” Smith confirmed. His words tasted stale, almost as if Denton had already heard and contradicted them in his head.

“No, my dear friend. It is the Syndicate that keeps them here. Do you think that all the self-importance and reflective consciousness of the Holo-Hacks is timeless? Do you think the golden age of the Film is forever? The answer is no. In the confines of those walls, our actors believe they are in their text, and that every setback they encounter will be eventually redeemed by some innate triumph. They will turn defeat into victory, and they will live in the happy ending of predictable consequence. But this is not their film. And there is no consequence which we cannot predict, or better still, control.” Smith looked back at Denton, and looked at his mouth, forming those words. His voice was intangible, yet oppressive, dismissive, yet dominating. His very words seemed to twist through the air like translucent serpents.

“What do you want from here, friend? Why did you join the Syndicate?” Smith asked, in a moment of conscious moral strength. “Look at these people, these…constructs, they are no more than beasts, and yet you enjoy parading their wretchedness, enticing it with empty promises of fame and fortune.” Denton was shocked. No, the Syndicate was shocked. He put his hand over his mouth, as if Smith’s words were his own.

“My dear Smith, whatever do you mean? You make it sound as if what is being done here is a terrible crime. Yet, our actors enjoy it. Is it wrong to gain pleasure from the pain of others?” That was a weak sentiment, and most certainly not something that Denton would ever say. No, he was about to destroy Smith. By tearing him apart, not limb by limb, but word by word. “We are not here for our pleasure, nor are we here to simply inflict pain upon others. This is a matter of reputation, and of business.” Denton’s voice became terse and emphatic, like he was instructing a disobedient pupil. “Consumer demand drives business. It drives innovation, and presents opportunities for exploitable markets. But the consumer is in itself, a marketable entity. Through what you would call ‘the parading of the ego’, the consumer acts as a representation of the commercial triumph. Through the clothes they wear, to the music they listen to, from what they talk about, to the very ways in which they talk, is merely the brand stamp of the company. And it should be our company, The Syndicate.”

Something was wrong. The Syndicate had never been about business, only about ideology. You couldn’t buy what they sell. But this time, Smith sensed an urgency in Denton’s voice.

“But why do we want anything to do with that?” Smith asked.

“One word, my friend. Chemtex. They’re the biggest corporation on the planet, theirs are the words on every investors lips, and theirs are the products on every consumer’s lips.” Smith glanced at the arguing girls. Their voices were strangely muted behind the plate glass, as if their argument was so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. They had absolutely no idea of the violence that was being done to them. But what Denton said was true all right. Chemtex outlets had been springing up like glassy knives all over the city. Those strange white edifices, so pure, so enticing, beckoning the customer like neon sirens. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps the Syndicate was loosing touch with the public, with its hacker monks and ideologies like tattoos. “We’re fighting a war, Smith. But this is a war not of guns and tanks and robots. This is a war of image, of influence, and ultimately, power.”

Smith thought about those last words for a second. “But that would mean…that would mean that this show…The Psychosis Factor…is just one huge advert.” Denton gave him a look which seemed to convey the unspeakable, in a resounding positive.

“There’s no need to worry about Chemtex now, the Chief Architects have come up with this show, and tonight, the ratings are through the roof.” Denton pointed casually to the fight which had broken out between the contestants in the garden. They had been arguing about who stole the hair straightners, and how to they were either totally irreplaceable, or totally irrelevant. Smith peered once again, through the glass window. He focused on the burly men who were using the fight to relieve the stress and tension that had built up within them since the start of the show. Then on the girls, tugging at each other’s hair in some incomprehensible bout of streaming psychobabble. A girl slipped quietly from the garden, back into the house. It was Cynthia, who had kept pretty much to herself since the fight had broken out. Suddenly, in the screaming mass of bodies, Smith noticed the unmistakable glint of a knife. Like an exclamation mark, it punctuated the screams with its sharp form, a contrast to the almost Ruben-esque surroundings of the fight.

“Wait, Denton. You’d better see this.” Smith warned. One of the girls holding the knife was threatening to stab another contestant.

“Dy’a want this?”

“What’ya gonna do?”

“I said, dy’a want this?”

“What’ya gonna do?”

“So ya do, ok sure!”

Smith turned to face Denton. He was utterly transfixed. Not in perverse wonder, but in a studious, analytical way. “This is serious Denton. Someone could get hurt.”

“I know. Just wait a second.” He replied. Ten seconds passed. Smith glanced at the clock. He focused on the second hand. It seemed to move, with that peculiarly precise sleekness that the knife did in the garden. He looked back at Denton.

“Ok, go.” Raising his hand, he ordered two guards to enter the garden. They promptly seized the knife, and broke up the fight. It seemed an anticlimax to the drama that had gone before. “We’ll cut that bit, I think.”

“Thank goodness that was the only thing that was cut,” replied Smith. He looked long and hard at Denton, as if to rebuke him for his actions. Was this the same man he knew as a businessman? Somehow, The Syndicate had changed him. He had become cold and calculating, in contrast to a world which was so full of life and vigour. This man held life and death in his hands. And with a snap of his fingers, he could alter a whole legion of representations. He could stop a death, or start a war. As Smith turned to check the cameras, he wondered how long the show had been broadcasting for. How much of the fight would have been caught on tape? How much would be shown? At what point did the Syndicate stop broadcasting violence as entertainment, and start broadcasting violence, plain and pure in its most barbaric form?

Chapter 4: Into The Depths Of The Paper Woman?

Surfaces. So many surfaces. The doors of the house were like netted lace, obscuring and flattening the body. It was day nine. After the argument, destitute lovers slept on the steps of shame, apologising to the Syndicate through their dreams. Cynthia would have none of it. She sat alone, in the small bedroom, looking over her belongings. The hairbrush, with its bedraggled threads, and the small face mirror, from which she could almost smell that soft mystic aroma of her dead aunt, scattered around its edges like ashes of a faraway world. The notebook, with which as a girl she used to record life’s little details. Silly little musings, which passed like petals in the wind, became the very ethos of her existence. Now, these objects encompassed her entire world, an escape route into a fantasy which she could control. For a short five minutes, she lived through these possessions, these signifiers of a mortality so fragile, so beautiful…so fleeting. They marked her passage through the world as if to say, “She lived. I was hers.”

Cynthia shed a few tears into the ocean of falsehood. She looked outside at the garden where last night’s fight had occurred. The early morning sun bathed the house in a glowing beauty, softening the sharp edges of the roof surrounding the enclosed central garden. Birds began to sing. The house was situated in a curious part of the city, South Side, amongst the grey industrial prefabs and glassy car showrooms. So strange and so secretive were The Syndicate, always on the fringes of society, on the fringes of thought. Their tricks haunted the corners of her mind like the undoings of a dirty mattress. Cynthia felt a longing for home. The trouble was, she had no home, and she’d sacrificed her business to enter The Psychosis Factor. She was nothing but the scant possessions that she brought here, like her very life was held amongst those objects. She strolled across the garden, and into the main seating area. In the corner of the room, beyond the bulbous sofas and clinical worksurfaces, was a small door, marked ‘confession’. In here was a room where contestants could talk in private to The Syndicate, about their housemates, their problems and their fears.

Cynthia opened the small door to the chamber, and cautiously walked inside. It was smaller than she imagined, circular in shape, with a single armchair facing a mirror in the far wall. The chamber smelt of leather, and the chair seemed to dominate the room, or rather, to emphasise the centrality of the person who sat in it. She sat down and stared long and hard in that mirror, searching for her inner self. The chair was indescribably comfortable, and the sensation of sitting in it seemed to transport her out of her body, until she was merely a brain in a jar, or a child in a womb.

“Hello Cynthia” said a knowing voice from the mirror.

“Who are you?” she replied.

“This is Denton. How can I be of service to you?”

“I want you to listen to me, Denton. And listen very carefully. Because what I am going to ask you now is going to define the rest of this show. I won’t be here at the end, because I’m leaving…before everyone else wakes up. But I need to know. What is the prize of The Psychosis Factor? Why are we here?”
Denton thought for a second. He looked through the glass, and deep into Cynthia’s face. He’d grown used to those eyes, and he thought, how much of himself was to be seen in them?

“My dear friend, Cynthia. If I told you that, your life would never be the same again.” Denton said calmly. As he said those words, he felt as if he were her big brother, and that it was his duty to pull back the inbred corporate lies of her world. “Look around you Cynthia. You must have noticed that you differentiate from your housemates in almost every conceivable way. Do you think you were invited onto this show by chance? That The Syndicate selects its actors randomly?”

“No, of course not. But I have no idea why you selected me. I have no idea why I am here, what I am competing for”

“What do you want from life, Cynthia? Why are you here? Why did you decide to accept our invitation?”

“I…I wanted to find myself. I wanted to know that I was alive, that my life isn’t just one huge stage play. I know this is a wholly inappropriate place, but…I just want to…exist.”

“You will not find existence here, Cynthia. In this world, there is no disparity between fact and fiction, no natural occurrence that is not mediated by human intervention. When the historian puts his pen to paper, is he merely recording the past? When the artist shoots his film, is he just observing the scene? No. For you see, reality is mediated through human experience, and it is this experience which becomes the world we know. But if you could somehow control that experience, control what people see, then you control reality itself. On this show, we have merely replaced the human eye with an artificial one. The videocamera represents the world beyond that door, and it represents you.”

“But I am more than just a character in your fiction! I am real, I am a woman!” Cynthia cried.

“And how can you tell? Where is the truth of your actions? The proof of your existence?” Denton replied.

“Because I know! I think and I feel. If I choose to speak then I can be sure of myself. Just because you don’t listen, or don’t record my thoughts, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist! I am a true woman!”

Silence became the long and hard road before the wall of impossible Syndicate logic hit her.

“And what is the true woman? Merely a reconstruction of the thousands that went before her. We choose how to build the female body, Cynthia. If we wish, we can make you the sweetest angel, or the most surreptitious whore,” Denton spat. For the first time, there was real malice in his words. “You have been searching, for your inner self, in our mirrors about this house. From our side, those mirrors are in fact windows.”
That image sank into Cynthia’s head. Wasn’t that like The Syndicate as a whole? Conventional beauty was theirs to manipulate, into designs of their choice. She thought. What was true beauty? Where was the source of her womanhood? Was she just a cardboard cut-out figure in a trifling soap-opera?

“How can I change, Denton. How can I understand?” she said slowly.

“Cynthia. You are the smartest person on The Psychosis Factor. Your experience in the fashion industry is impressive. Smith and I were both commenting on the how impressed we were of your latest models. So impressed in fact, that we wanted you to be our model on this show. But alas, we were wrong. You are more than this. If we left you any longer, Chemtex would have snapped you up and convinced you to join them. It would kill me to see such a waste of your talents.” Denton’s voice became soft. Cynthia began to wonder if that was all he was. A voice. Did human thought really need a body to be expressed through?

“I want more from life. I want to be more.” She sighed.

“And you can, Cynthia. I shall tell you what the prize of The Psychosis Factor truly is. The greatest gift The Syndicate can give. To open its ranks and allow others to become at one with its ways of thinking. The show is much more than just entertainment, more than even an effective method of global product placement. It is a recruitment program. We brought you here to study you, and now it would be an honour if you could join us.”

“Will you help me find the source of my womanhood? Could it be by chance that you led me here?” she asked.

“There is no source, only difference. No chance, only choice.” Denton replied emphatically. “And it is your choice, Cynthia.”

Her life seemed to flash before her. All the events that led up to this point seemed to play in front of her eyes, and like a reel of film, they passed right in front of her. She began to wonder how much of this life was constructed, how much had been edited without her knowing. She could almost see the joins, where The Syndicate could cut and fuse those defining moments together. How false she must have seemed on this show. How terribly defined and deliberate she must have been, as if The Syndicate had written her part in their stories. But now, now it was time to go beyond the lies.

“Then I have decided. I have decided to join you,” she said meekly.

“Gather your belongings, and I will prepare an exit from which you can escape. It’s early yet. The show will go on for another month. Although the prize has already been claimed, a couple of days on the cover of Neon Magazine shall satisfy the others,” Denton laughed.

Cynthia returned to the bedroom, and collected her belongings. The hairbrush, the mirror, her diary and all those little things which made her who she was. She collected her thoughts, and walked through a small door which led down a grey corridor to the backstage area.
In the evening, she found herself beside a large river, deep in some unknown forest. Denton and Smith were beside her, and looking down, she saw people standing, waist deep in the dark water.

“All rivers signify a return to the origin, Cynthia,” Denton said majestically. “But there is no origin here, only a chasm of meaning from which to cross. Those possessions of yours, are marred by the restraints of conventional design, constrained by stolid and predictable thought. Throw them into the river, and you will learn to live by the wisdom on the other side.”

Cynthia thought about this. She was throwing her world, her very identity into the care of The Syndicate. Then she remembered. How she was controlled by corporate greed, how she’d danced on the commercial stage of the catwalk, with its flashy single mindedness, where girls wore beauty like a cage, and smeared themselves in the indelible lifestyle of image therapy. In a single movement, she tossed the bag containing her belongings into the river, and watched the water absorb and possess the symbols of her being. She had become free. She had become one of The Syndicate.

The End

Description
The Divisive Intensive: A Representation of The Misjudged Body

Chapter 1: The Image Surgery

“The video camera. Isn’t she beautiful? Here…take another look.” Smith peered down the lens to see the object, some undefined figure of course femininity drawing him in. Like a wound, She reminded him of his own mortality, both repulsive but strangely fascinating.

“What…the girl?”

“No, the eyepiece. Isn’t it just divine?”

Smith leaned back. It was day eight of the Psychosis Factor, the new Reality TV show to hit SyndiNet 27. Contestants would be monitored twenty-four hours a day, and The Syndicate would package their exploits like a bad perfume. This was the show’s first series, but Smith knew it had always been there, like a bad smell, forever haunting the very fabric of the TV schedules. He looked back at Denton.

“Yes…yes I suppose it is.”

Denton was the kind of man who aged every time he spoke. Those deep eyes always seemed to be on the cusp of discovering some great truth that could never be spoken of. Like language didn’t have enough words to convey its magnificence. Denton made that majesty…that mystery…his own. He and Smith had known each other for years. They were together when they joined the Syndicate, when they threw their briefcases into the river and watched the findings of conventional society turn to mush, forever merging and deteriorating into disorder. They were together when they danced with the swords and took their oaths, when they had done everything that The Syndicate required of them to become Architects of The Psychosis Factor. But that was where Denton and Smith were different. Whereas Smith considered running the show as just a job, Denton considered it an honour, an obligation.

“Do you know why the video camera is such a beautiful thing?” Denton asked, in that peculiar rhetorical way of his.

“Why’s that?” Smith replied.

“Because the video camera organises the world in such a way that other powers could not possibly hope to achieve.”

“I always thought the camera was like the gun. Only safe if you were behind it.” Smith quipped.
“My dear friend. Not at all. Why, the military and the media are nothing alike. Where the military was built for destruction, the media was built for creation. What can the soldier do with his tools? How can he impose himself on society?”

“By shooting…and doing all those other things that soldiers do.”

“Exactly. When the soldier imposes his will on a people, his efforts take immediate effect. But on the extradition of this will, the act of creation and destruction occur simultaneously. In short, when the soldier kills, the subject he is trying to represent is removed through the very actions that defined it.”

Smith looked at Denton warily. It was true what he said, that soldiers guns were getting smaller. He’d read about rogue attempts to re-nationalize military service, and how the soldiers became bored and disaffected because there was nothing to do but clean their guns.

“But the video camera is not at all like the gun. And we not at all like the soldier.” Denton continued. “When the artist shoots his subject with the camera, that subject is captured, not destroyed. As artists, you and I can impose our will secretly, and define, rather than destroy a culture.” Denton looked through the plate glass that separated the studio from the house that held the contestants. He pointed to the girl that Smith had looked at through the camera lens.

“That woman, and everything she represents, is everything that The Syndicate represents. We can make her do anything we wish. Through the video camera, we choose what the audience sees, and more importantly, how they see it. Which parts of this girl’s life do we show, and which parts do we edit out? In our choices, we control that girl, who is no more than an actor in a play, or a character in a videogame. And we are writing the script, right here, right now.” Denton gave Smith one of those old looks that showed he knew how The Syndicate worked. Like the camera, he was intrinsically in the world…but not part of it.

Smith glanced down the lens once again, framing the girl in medium close up. Yes. That was his terminology, the radio chatter of real warriors, free from all the pomp and audacity of the soldier who wore his body armour like a comfort blanket, and used his assault rifle like an air guitar. Suddenly, Smith felt a sense of power which helped him understand what Denton had said. He felt like a surgeon, analysing the subject, dividing and reproducing it, through an infinite range of viewpoints, his view, The Syndicate’s view, and the audience’s view.

“My dear Smith, this reminds me of our hacking days. Ah, we saw how people lived back then. Such memories. Well, here’s to the audience, I suppose” Denton mused.

Smith turned the camera off. He turned to face his old friend, his name, DENTON etched on his soul like a nameplate above the office door. He smiled. “Here’s to the audience.”

Chapter 2: The Feminine Fortress

“To you, the video camera. Did the impious hand of man create your eye of metal? Did they interpret the materials of your being as a way of delivering themselves into the world? From within that obsequious hollow, do you yearn to create merely in the name of your master? Or do you, the camera…hate us?”

The camera replied with a tilt down and rapid zoom. Cynthia returned the glare. By now, she had learned not to interpret the camera as a substitute for presence, but instead deal with that presence as a thing in and of itself. She looked deep into that veiled dome for any signs of life. Could it be that The Syndicate had created sentience within? Perhaps somewhere, just somewhere, beyond the infinite facets of glassy representation, hid the ultimate truth, the true woman. She saw her reflection in the lens as it focused upon her visage, as if dividing the room in two like some impious confession box.

Cynthia had been on the show since day one. Being an independent fashion photographer, she knew how the shoot could capture a woman’s ‘true beauty’. Cashing in on the cheap airbrushings of vain excess, she’d sold beauty like silicone tears. Hers were the type who at The Awards, would cry hard when they lost, and cry even harder when they won. The Psychosis Factor would be no different. But her game had turned sour, and it felt strange being on the other side. The show played host to an equal number of men and women, all vying for the possession of the mysterious prize, awarded only to a single contestant at the end of the show. The audience would vote each week for their favourite competitors, and those with the fewest votes would be deemed unworthy of the award.

There were three contestants sitting on the sofa in the seating area. Like parasites, they seemed to be feeding on the very fabric of that couch, clinging onto the house as if it were their livelihood, their claim to existence. Normally, Cynthia would brush these vacuous attention bugs into the gutter, or at least sweep them under the newspaper columns of the lesser hacks. The faint murmur of their musings wafted gently in her direction, as if the estrogenic egos of screaming eunuchs and vagrant chemical girls contaminated the airwaves with their opinions.

“What’s up with you then?”
“Some nark’s gone an’ hid me ‘air straightners”
“I used them this morning.”
“Well I need ‘em now. Whatchoo done wi ‘em?”
“I don’t know.”

Cynthia walked into the room. She looked at those two girls, those two excuses of consumerist exhibitionism. Their voices drew her attention to their mouths, those oily shimmers of deep purple. It seemed to her that the whole body was contained within those details. That their lips were somehow constitutive of the entire representation of womanhood, irrevocably stained with the blood of capitalist endeavour. The conversation appeared to Cynthia as one long, uninterrupted stream of meaningless data, scrambled through the effects of the ever-present glare of the camera.
One of the girls turned to face her.

“What you looking for?” She said.

“Nothing really.” Cynthia replied.

“You ain’t stole my ‘air straightners ‘ave you? Nah, you don’t look the type. Ya never wear makeup, never dye your ‘air, never play with the boys. What are ya?”

How easy it would be to get into an argument. Cynthia thought about tearing this empty headed girl to pieces with her views. With a few sentences, she could destroy her entire world. “I never wear makeup because I want to be in control of myself. You couldn’t possibly imagine what’s being done to you,” she muttered.

“What? I am in control of my life. I can make men do whatever I want.”

“And how can you be in control, when the signifier of femininity is at the mercy of male presence? When the very mediums used to represent womanhood are run by men, how can you achieve autonomy as an independent being?”

Cynthia thought of Chemtex. The world’s leading ‘Recreational Pharmaceuticals Company’. Their seal of approval was the same seal on every girl’s lips, every eyelid closed from caked layers of mascara. Chemtex could do pretty much whatever it wanted. It was so big that policing it from outside was impossible. Instead, the corporation was regulated by internal investigation departments, and Cynthia new they’d turn their backs on a problem if the price was right.

“Shaataap you! Stop acting so deep!” the girl snapped, pulling Cynthia out of her dream, or rather, pulling her out of one dream and into another. These poor women. What were they but the actors of a thousand scenarios, a thousand pleasures, and a thousand deaths? But as long as they were on The Psychosis Factor, they were under the control of The Syndicate. Cynthia felt the influence trying to break her down, and wandered the garden for a few hours, pacing like a caged beast. She felt like she was merely part of the house, an object rather than an occupant.

She smiled to herself. Yes, that was it. Her body was a fortress. A fortress to be defended. Defended against the stupidity of the vacuous girls, and the scowls of the hungry men. But above all, she would defend herself from the cameras, and the hive of interpretations which lay behind them.

Chapter 3: The Rating Game

Like a dull siren, the argument corroded the very walls of the house. Smith could hear the sharp mumbles reverberate off the plate glass window. Someone had stolen the hair straightners for the last time. Smith looked back at that incomprehensible face that belonged to Denton. Was he enjoying this? Was this more than just an honour?

“Do you know what sustains these people? What keeps them here?” he asked. Smith knew he was being tested. Although they’d both joined the Syndicate at the same time, it always appeared as if Denton was his mentor. Just like the Syndicate, it was like he’d always been there.

“The promise of fame, and the excessive parading of a blind ego” Smith confirmed. His words tasted stale, almost as if Denton had already heard and contradicted them in his head.

“No, my dear friend. It is the Syndicate that keeps them here. Do you think that all the self-importance and reflective consciousness of the Holo-Hacks is timeless? Do you think the golden age of the Film is forever? The answer is no. In the confines of those walls, our actors believe they are in their text, and that every setback they encounter will be eventually redeemed by some innate triumph. They will turn defeat into victory, and they will live in the happy ending of predictable consequence. But this is not their film. And there is no consequence which we cannot predict, or better still, control.” Smith looked back at Denton, and looked at his mouth, forming those words. His voice was intangible, yet oppressive, dismissive, yet dominating. His very words seemed to twist through the air like translucent serpents.

“What do you want from here, friend? Why did you join the Syndicate?” Smith asked, in a moment of conscious moral strength. “Look at these people, these…constructs, they are no more than beasts, and yet you enjoy parading their wretchedness, enticing it with empty promises of fame and fortune.” Denton was shocked. No, the Syndicate was shocked. He put his hand over his mouth, as if Smith’s words were his own.

“My dear Smith, whatever do you mean? You make it sound as if what is being done here is a terrible crime. Yet, our actors enjoy it. Is it wrong to gain pleasure from the pain of others?” That was a weak sentiment, and most certainly not something that Denton would ever say. No, he was about to destroy Smith. By tearing him apart, not limb by limb, but word by word. “We are not here for our pleasure, nor are we here to simply inflict pain upon others. This is a matter of reputation, and of business.” Denton’s voice became terse and emphatic, like he was instructing a disobedient pupil. “Consumer demand drives business. It drives innovation, and presents opportunities for exploitable markets. But the consumer is in itself, a marketable entity. Through what you would call ‘the parading of the ego’, the consumer acts as a representation of the commercial triumph. Through the clothes they wear, to the music they listen to, from what they talk about, to the very ways in which they talk, is merely the brand stamp of the company. And it should be our company, The Syndicate.”

Something was wrong. The Syndicate had never been about business, only about ideology. You couldn’t buy what they sell. But this time, Smith sensed an urgency in Denton’s voice.

“But why do we want anything to do with that?” Smith asked.

“One word, my friend. Chemtex. They’re the biggest corporation on the planet, theirs are the words on every investors lips, and theirs are the products on every consumer’s lips.” Smith glanced at the arguing girls. Their voices were strangely muted behind the plate glass, as if their argument was so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. They had absolutely no idea of the violence that was being done to them. But what Denton said was true all right. Chemtex outlets had been springing up like glassy knives all over the city. Those strange white edifices, so pure, so enticing, beckoning the customer like neon sirens. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps the Syndicate was loosing touch with the public, with its hacker monks and ideologies like tattoos. “We’re fighting a war, Smith. But this is a war not of guns and tanks and robots. This is a war of image, of influence, and ultimately, power.”

Smith thought about those last words for a second. “But that would mean…that would mean that this show…The Psychosis Factor…is just one huge advert.” Denton gave him a look which seemed to convey the unspeakable, in a resounding positive.

“There’s no need to worry about Chemtex now, the Chief Architects have come up with this show, and tonight, the ratings are through the roof.” Denton pointed casually to the fight which had broken out between the contestants in the garden. They had been arguing about who stole the hair straightners, and how to they were either totally irreplaceable, or totally irrelevant. Smith peered once again, through the glass window. He focused on the burly men who were using the fight to relieve the stress and tension that had built up within them since the start of the show. Then on the girls, tugging at each other’s hair in some incomprehensible bout of streaming psychobabble. A girl slipped quietly from the garden, back into the house. It was Cynthia, who had kept pretty much to herself since the fight had broken out. Suddenly, in the screaming mass of bodies, Smith noticed the unmistakable glint of a knife. Like an exclamation mark, it punctuated the screams with its sharp form, a contrast to the almost Ruben-esque surroundings of the fight.

“Wait, Denton. You’d better see this.” Smith warned. One of the girls holding the knife was threatening to stab another contestant.

“Dy’a want this?”

“What’ya gonna do?”

“I said, dy’a want this?”

“What’ya gonna do?”

“So ya do, ok sure!”

Smith turned to face Denton. He was utterly transfixed. Not in perverse wonder, but in a studious, analytical way. “This is serious Denton. Someone could get hurt.”

“I know. Just wait a second.” He replied. Ten seconds passed. Smith glanced at the clock. He focused on the second hand. It seemed to move, with that peculiarly precise sleekness that the knife did in the garden. He looked back at Denton.

“Ok, go.” Raising his hand, he ordered two guards to enter the garden. They promptly seized the knife, and broke up the fight. It seemed an anticlimax to the drama that had gone before. “We’ll cut that bit, I think.”

“Thank goodness that was the only thing that was cut,” replied Smith. He looked long and hard at Denton, as if to rebuke him for his actions. Was this the same man he knew as a businessman? Somehow, The Syndicate had changed him. He had become cold and calculating, in contrast to a world which was so full of life and vigour. This man held life and death in his hands. And with a snap of his fingers, he could alter a whole legion of representations. He could stop a death, or start a war. As Smith turned to check the cameras, he wondered how long the show had been broadcasting for. How much of the fight would have been caught on tape? How much would be shown? At what point did the Syndicate stop broadcasting violence as entertainment, and start broadcasting violence, plain and pure in its most barbaric form?

Chapter 4: Into The Depths Of The Paper Woman?

Surfaces. So many surfaces. The doors of the house were like netted lace, obscuring and flattening the body. It was day nine. After the argument, destitute lovers slept on the steps of shame, apologising to the Syndicate through their dreams. Cynthia would have none of it. She sat alone, in the small bedroom, looking over her belongings. The hairbrush, with its bedraggled threads, and the small face mirror, from which she could almost smell that soft mystic aroma of her dead aunt, scattered around its edges like ashes of a faraway world. The notebook, with which as a girl she used to record life’s little details. Silly little musings, which passed like petals in the wind, became the very ethos of her existence. Now, these objects encompassed her entire world, an escape route into a fantasy which she could control. For a short five minutes, she lived through these possessions, these signifiers of a mortality so fragile, so beautiful…so fleeting. They marked her passage through the world as if to say, “She lived. I was hers.”

Cynthia shed a few tears into the ocean of falsehood. She looked outside at the garden where last night’s fight had occurred. The early morning sun bathed the house in a glowing beauty, softening the sharp edges of the roof surrounding the enclosed central garden. Birds began to sing. The house was situated in a curious part of the city, South Side, amongst the grey industrial prefabs and glassy car showrooms. So strange and so secretive were The Syndicate, always on the fringes of society, on the fringes of thought. Their tricks haunted the corners of her mind like the undoings of a dirty mattress. Cynthia felt a longing for home. The trouble was, she had no home, and she’d sacrificed her business to enter The Psychosis Factor. She was nothing but the scant possessions that she brought here, like her very life was held amongst those objects. She strolled across the garden, and into the main seating area. In the corner of the room, beyond the bulbous sofas and clinical worksurfaces, was a small door, marked ‘confession’. In here was a room where contestants could talk in private to The Syndicate, about their housemates, their problems and their fears.

Cynthia opened the small door to the chamber, and cautiously walked inside. It was smaller than she imagined, circular in shape, with a single armchair facing a mirror in the far wall. The chamber smelt of leather, and the chair seemed to dominate the room, or rather, to emphasise the centrality of the person who sat in it. She sat down and stared long and hard in that mirror, searching for her inner self. The chair was indescribably comfortable, and the sensation of sitting in it seemed to transport her out of her body, until she was merely a brain in a jar, or a child in a womb.

“Hello Cynthia” said a knowing voice from the mirror.

“Who are you?” she replied.

“This is Denton. How can I be of service to you?”

“I want you to listen to me, Denton. And listen very carefully. Because what I am going to ask you now is going to define the rest of this show. I won’t be here at the end, because I’m leaving…before everyone else wakes up. But I need to know. What is the prize of The Psychosis Factor? Why are we here?”
Denton thought for a second. He looked through the glass, and deep into Cynthia’s face. He’d grown used to those eyes, and he thought, how much of himself was to be seen in them?

“My dear friend, Cynthia. If I told you that, your life would never be the same again.” Denton said calmly. As he said those words, he felt as if he were her big brother, and that it was his duty to pull back the inbred corporate lies of her world. “Look around you Cynthia. You must have noticed that you differentiate from your housemates in almost every conceivable way. Do you think you were invited onto this show by chance? That The Syndicate selects its actors randomly?”

“No, of course not. But I have no idea why you selected me. I have no idea why I am here, what I am competing for”

“What do you want from life, Cynthia? Why are you here? Why did you decide to accept our invitation?”

“I…I wanted to find myself. I wanted to know that I was alive, that my life isn’t just one huge stage play. I know this is a wholly inappropriate place, but…I just want to…exist.”

“You will not find existence here, Cynthia. In this world, there is no disparity between fact and fiction, no natural occurrence that is not mediated by human intervention. When the historian puts his pen to paper, is he merely recording the past? When the artist shoots his film, is he just observing the scene? No. For you see, reality is mediated through human experience, and it is this experience which becomes the world we know. But if you could somehow control that experience, control what people see, then you control reality itself. On this show, we have merely replaced the human eye with an artificial one. The videocamera represents the world beyond that door, and it represents you.”

“But I am more than just a character in your fiction! I am real, I am a woman!” Cynthia cried.

“And how can you tell? Where is the truth of your actions? The proof of your existence?” Denton replied.

“Because I know! I think and I feel. If I choose to speak then I can be sure of myself. Just because you don’t listen, or don’t record my thoughts, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist! I am a true woman!”

Silence became the long and hard road before the wall of impossible Syndicate logic hit her.

“And what is the true woman? Merely a reconstruction of the thousands that went before her. We choose how to build the female body, Cynthia. If we wish, we can make you the sweetest angel, or the most surreptitious whore,” Denton spat. For the first time, there was real malice in his words. “You have been searching, for your inner self, in our mirrors about this house. From our side, those mirrors are in fact windows.”
That image sank into Cynthia’s head. Wasn’t that like The Syndicate as a whole? Conventional beauty was theirs to manipulate, into designs of their choice. She thought. What was true beauty? Where was the source of her womanhood? Was she just a cardboard cut-out figure in a trifling soap-opera?

“How can I change, Denton. How can I understand?” she said slowly.

“Cynthia. You are the smartest person on The Psychosis Factor. Your experience in the fashion industry is impressive. Smith and I were both commenting on the how impressed we were of your latest models. So impressed in fact, that we wanted you to be our model on this show. But alas, we were wrong. You are more than this. If we left you any longer, Chemtex would have snapped you up and convinced you to join them. It would kill me to see such a waste of your talents.” Denton’s voice became soft. Cynthia began to wonder if that was all he was. A voice. Did human thought really need a body to be expressed through?

“I want more from life. I want to be more.” She sighed.

“And you can, Cynthia. I shall tell you what the prize of The Psychosis Factor truly is. The greatest gift The Syndicate can give. To open its ranks and allow others to become at one with its ways of thinking. The show is much more than just entertainment, more than even an effective method of global product placement. It is a recruitment program. We brought you here to study you, and now it would be an honour if you could join us.”

“Will you help me find the source of my womanhood? Could it be by chance that you led me here?” she asked.

“There is no source, only difference. No chance, only choice.” Denton replied emphatically. “And it is your choice, Cynthia.”

Her life seemed to flash before her. All the events that led up to this point seemed to play in front of her eyes, and like a reel of film, they passed right in front of her. She began to wonder how much of this life was constructed, how much had been edited without her knowing. She could almost see the joins, where The Syndicate could cut and fuse those defining moments together. How false she must have seemed on this show. How terribly defined and deliberate she must have been, as if The Syndicate had written her part in their stories. But now, now it was time to go beyond the lies.

“Then I have decided. I have decided to join you,” she said meekly.

“Gather your belongings, and I will prepare an exit from which you can escape. It’s early yet. The show will go on for another month. Although the prize has already been claimed, a couple of days on the cover of Neon Magazine shall satisfy the others,” Denton laughed.

Cynthia returned to the bedroom, and collected her belongings. The hairbrush, the mirror, her diary and all those little things which made her who she was. She collected her thoughts, and walked through a small door which led down a grey corridor to the backstage area.
In the evening, she found herself beside a large river, deep in some unknown forest. Denton and Smith were beside her, and looking down, she saw people standing, waist deep in the dark water.

“All rivers signify a return to the origin, Cynthia,” Denton said majestically. “But there is no origin here, only a chasm of meaning from which to cross. Those possessions of yours, are marred by the restraints of conventional design, constrained by stolid and predictable thought. Throw them into the river, and you will learn to live by the wisdom on the other side.”

Cynthia thought about this. She was throwing her world, her very identity into the care of The Syndicate. Then she remembered. How she was controlled by corporate greed, how she’d danced on the commercial stage of the catwalk, with its flashy single mindedness, where girls wore beauty like a cage, and smeared themselves in the indelible lifestyle of image therapy. In a single movement, she tossed the bag containing her belongings into the river, and watched the water absorb and possess the symbols of her being. She had become free. She had become one of The Syndicate.

The End