(Click here to read part one.)
The fields are stretching out. Desks are now the land and the hills. WeWork is the landlord of these desks. They are the future.
As I predicted, many more people have joined Adam’s shared-space cult. They don’t care that the papers say everything’s over in ten years when the leases are up. They hear twinkling promises of glory from their leader’s mouth and believe every word. Why wouldn’t they? Tonight they are basking in the opening of yet another office.
This particular field of desks owned by WeWork is camouflaged much better than the others. It’s mid-century furniture, parquet floors, and colorful Mondrian-esque rugs for as far as I can see. I almost forget it’s an office at all. This time, after last time when I wrote some things about Adam that he didn’t like, I’ve been brought to the mothership. There’s so much Monstera in here I feel like I’m in the open air villa of some fat Mexican drug lord.
“What do we do now?” I ask the person assigned to show me around. His name is Rob Miracle. I don’t know if it’s his real name.
Rob has a large mouth and he uses it now to smile smugly. “Just crank out whatever work you need to get done until happy hour, man,” he says, then picks up a copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Crushing It!. He doesn’t look up again but he’s still talking to me. “Happy hour starts at five and then you’re around a bunch of like-minded people trying to change this world. You’ll see then that we’re just good people starting socially conscious businesses. Product with a purpose, ya know?”
I don’t. All I want to know is, when will someone explain what exactly we’re heading towards here? What’s the endgame? In ten years when the leases are up, will the attack commence? Who do we attack? Are we just trying to blur the line between work and life until it’s all fused together like a tumor with teeth and hair and spreadsheets? As everyone coworking around us talks about “passion” and “goal-oriented living” and “personal brand”, I think that tumor sounds likely. There’s a perverse morality in the air. Tastes like dark roast.
I turn the cup of coffee I’m holding and read the quote written there in flowery cursive: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and 
despair!
What is that noise? I think. It’s the coworkers. Everyone is now tapping away at end of day emails and the noise is like a swarm of burning locusts. Everyone splits and scurries off. They get into workgroups to “tackle” final project planning. They streamline. They get so goddamn streamlined that working and shitting and eating and fucking are all the same thing. It’s all at once and it’s with gusto.
I see it now. Falun Gong is headed for the shredder.
There is an almost universal truth that when an empire is in decline, it proclaims the opposite as fact. No, what?—everything is greater than ever, my good man. Look over here at how shiny and new this thing is we got. Anesthetize yourself with all our amenities. That is how they get you. People always look. It’s a nicer view than rot and decay. People will look anywhere not to have to realize they are standing on a heap of worms.
Adam emerges and everyone looks up. He’s got a hoodie on under his blazer and his fake tan is glowing under that. He stands by the beer tap, just like he’s one of us, and clears his throat. He says, “I need you. Every one of you. I need you to be perfectly brutal.
After tonight’s ceremony, I want your bodies tight a ready like you’re all little Mike Tysons. Imagine. A million Mike Tysons working shoulder to shoulder, hulking over laptops. Networking until bruised and swollen. You’ll dominate in your fields and win. I found one to make a deal with us so that the lights stay on forever. We just have to do this one thing for it tonight. Now read your self-help books and study the tenets of Falun Gong. Until your eyes are pulp, read, my little Mike Tysons.” He waves and walks off, disappearing through a red door.
“Pretty heavy stuff, huh?” Rob asks. His smugness has intensified. He almost looks stoned.
“Yea, uh, sure. Sure, man.” Clearly, everyone nodding along has tipped over the edge. I shift my attention to the starry-eyed people in official Falun Gong-yellow jackets starting to form lines. They are lining up at a bank of phone booths. “What are they doing?” I point and ask.
“Nothing, nothing,” Rob says waving his hand. He puts his arm around my shoulder and takes me away. “Why don’t we grab a snack in the kitchen?” We get there and he hands me an apple. “You know, it’s vital that Falun Gong’s message gets woven into this next chapter of American enterprise. We have to do anything, even align with outside forces. We can’t close down like all the downers want. But don’t worry, Adam just said he dove deep into many texts and found a new way to make sure we stay a tech darling.”
“Is that what he was saying just now?” I ask. “You guys are a tech company?” I also ask.
He smiles and starts to explain. I look over his shoulder and see the yellow jacket people walking into the booths, closing the doors behind them, then dropping to the floor. Rob assures me all the formaldehyde has been removed from the booths and that it’s nothing to worry about. They must have just worked too hard today. He takes me and shows me the wall of free snacks they have stocked. He says that I should stop asking about the leases and the specific plan. WeWork simply needs a little boost and Adam has found a way so we should just trust him. They need something to stand on to help the company, and therefore Falun Gong, 
reach higher. And that’s when it hits me. The people in the phone booths are sacrifices. Falun Gong has never had a specific god to worship, but Adam went and found them one. One that takes to give. These people are the stack of bodies that will be lifting this place up. Rob keeps talking and forcing me to look at other things. Look at this coffee maker. Ignore that. He shows me their row of treadmill desks.
The telephone booths are packed full now. Inside, still purple bodies are bent into tangled piles. The poor bastards actually thought it was possible—the Eternal Nine to Five. Their smiling faces are those of people who truly believed in crisp white collars fifty feet high and rivers of silk ties. Now they dream in memos. They are feed. This is Moloch’s office. All hail Moloch.
