🏢 I'm so sorry for what we did
We're not all sorry for the same thing and the same reasons, but deep down we're all sorry. Most of us haven't stopped. I have, for a moment, but before I start again I'd like to cleanse myself of sin by apologising, sincerely, to all of you. I really am so sorry. Though they don't admit it, I know the rest of the Professional Managerial Class is sorry too. We should be.
At first, we didn't know any better. It was aspirational not to work with your hands, to integrate your consciousness with the apparatus until your body atrophied to a floating head dictating communiques to a fleet of aspiring floating heads (still humiliatingly dragging around an entire superfluous body beneath their own unrealised human capital). The body is a sacrifice we're willing to make, many of us don't notice. Some of us keep it as an aesthetic choice, a tastemaking exercise for your taste in exercise. Some of us retain it as a fuel source, head atop bottleneck.
The Firm underwent a similar transformation, straining until it too snapped in the middle. Those of us who felt the foundations shift clung to the underside to ascend away from the dirt we sprung from. The dirt you stand in. We remembered the times we were beaten when we didn't deserve it, and vowed never to do the same. To only beat our own underlings when they did deserve it, (though to be honest we didn't get it right all the time we're only human). We cursed some of you with elevation, and now you're us, and you are also sorry for the damage you've done.
You're welcome, I'm sorry.
Most of us ruled by fear and power, some of us, the evil ones, ruled with love. We built families. The worst of us built families as we pleaded with you not to consider it a family, to not trust us, to not put your faith in us. You trusted us most of all. Sorry. I tried to tell you that one day we would be on opposing sides and you were so shocked to see me standing across from you when the horns sounded. Your surprise made for an unsporting battle. I truly do not know how to warn you such that you will truly prepare. I'm sorry.
It is at this point that we all do know better. These are not problems that can be resolved without leaving, and we're never going back. We won. We worked hard for it, we earned this. You're bitter crabs in a bitter bucket. Fuck you for trying to drag me back down.
Fuck you, I'm sorry.
We all feel it and if there's one secret I'll share it's that this is our weakness. Make me feel good please, please, please. Make yourself our annual saintly miracle to stave off the ghosts of past, present and future for another year. I promise I will move Heaven and Earth for you to avoid having to build Heaven on Earth.
Please take this, I'm sorry.
Of course we're fucking idiots. Stretched ourselves thin over the machinery until we've lost our original shape. We keep a model of it at home, occasionally taking it out for a brief excursion. Laps around the yard, conjugal visits - perhaps an occasional special dispensation to leave on good behaviour. Back to human for a couple weeks a year. Back to drape the orphan crusher after the brief respite.
I fell in love with the orphan crusher. It's so elegant, it's transcendently beautiful, some of the best design work of my career. I do not have children but if I do I hope to love them with this fervor. If you take a step back (purpose and function aside) it is a work of genuine art and talent by the people who maintain it. Physical impossibilities became reality through the collective imagination of brilliant people. Limitations sundered by our boundless spirits. The fires of creation lit by the sparks of genius. Astonishing what we could achieve together as one.
Of course it too was ruined. To our collective horror design-by-committee poured like sand into the gears of our creation. No less profitable but far less effective, leaving half mangled detritus across the factory floor where before it worked to perfection. We panicked and assigned everyone synthetic vessels designed by the committee. It didn't matter, the floating heads rejoiced that we could finally leave our mortal forms entirely. We imbued these misshapen phylacteries with the last of our spirit - perhaps if we train this model we can reclaim the model we left of ourselves.
These creatures learned from the best of us - the correct grade of sand to pour into the gears as lubricant. How to bullshit our way through a meeting we didn't prepare for. How to make money out of solving problems by spending money creating novel problems to solve. We were briefly surprised and concerned that creatures trained to turn sentences into novels were so proficient at lossful inflation but growth is growth.
I do worry that one day it'll cease to function at all and The Firm will cease to exist and the machine will run one last time before grinding to a final halt.
Will anyone remember what we achieved.
If you do, I'm sorry.