“Franz Kafka Has Joined LinkedIn”

Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

1190

Abstract

sociation in the Madison Garden quarter had not gone well. An errant blob of creamed spinach had adhered to his somewhat frayed left sleeve. Try as he might, the green monstrosity continued to reappear, catching the gimlet actuarial eye of his dinner companion. Had word got around? Could all hope for a new position be lost?Any attempt at writing had been given up earlier in the day. A mass of noise, steel, granite, and humanity had pulled him into the city mechanism, rolled him around, and deposited him in an obscure alley where he had wandered until finding this cool refuge. Could the woman’s mechanism provide guidance?FK made his introductions to his neighbor, Mildred O’Malley. She was alone but talking to an invisible companion.“Here Franz,” she offered kindly. “Let me set you up with an account on LinkchedIiin.” The mechanism had a name! Mildred tapped into the screen and the mechanism generated a rubric of symbols with which to gain access.“You need a photograph.”Mildred looked at him expectantly. He saw a comforting blank figure to the upper left and decided it would do instead.

Options

“I will be represented by this shadow,” he pronounced.“Franz, that won’t work. People want to know who you are! How can they even be sure you are real without a picture. And NO selfie. They can always tell.”FK felt a damp sweat congregate about his midsection. They were here as well! No wonder the President of the Bronx Adjusters Association had gazed so knowingly at the damning blotch of sleeve spinach last night! If he was identified on this mechanism by portrait and made his sad plea for gainful work known to the world, if he advanced his case in the face of a dozen, a score, a thousand refusals, what might rise up against him?Throwing the deathly screen to the ground, FK fled the dairy bar and began to run, run, run. Upon reaching the market for fish known as Fulton’s, he secreted himself into the storage area of a vessel shipping off to Liverpool. Armed with ample hard tack and jerky, notepaper, pens, and ink, he gratefully made his way east across the waters of space and time, back to the relative peace and tranquility of his family home in 1912 Prague. He would venture out no more!</article></body>

“Franz Kafka Has Joined LinkedIn”

“It is inevitable, My Dear. I will sink ever deeper into a vast stew of unlikability.”

Franz Kafka (to be known hereafter as “FK” to save ink) was sipping on a glass of fresh goat milk at a dairy bar in the Lower East Side on an until-now unchronicled job hunting trip to America, 2023. A voice had drilled a tunnel through his left temple and would not be dislodged. It was coming from the next table.

“Yes, it is true. My portrait on the giant mechanism is statistically certain to continue its decline. After all I am a woman turning 51. Yes, I had my moment, but my likeability is now down in the dumps with my competence and influence.”

FK gazed at the offending image. It appeared to him quite stout and amiable. The woman possessed the imperious prow of an ancient Juno, and piercing if somewhat shadowed eyes. The affect appeared a bit slatternly and informal for portraiture to his taste, but otherwise nothing amiss.

He tried to forget the previous night. Despite his best efforts, a dinner with the President of the Bronx Adjusters’ Association in the Madison Garden quarter had not gone well. An errant blob of creamed spinach had adhered to his somewhat frayed left sleeve. Try as he might, the green monstrosity continued to reappear, catching the gimlet actuarial eye of his dinner companion. Had word got around? Could all hope for a new position be lost?

Any attempt at writing had been given up earlier in the day. A mass of noise, steel, granite, and humanity had pulled him into the city mechanism, rolled him around, and deposited him in an obscure alley where he had wandered until finding this cool refuge. Could the woman’s mechanism provide guidance?

FK made his introductions to his neighbor, Mildred O’Malley. She was alone but talking to an invisible companion.

“Here Franz,” she offered kindly. “Let me set you up with an account on LinkchedIiin.” The mechanism had a name! Mildred tapped into the screen and the mechanism generated a rubric of symbols with which to gain access.

“You need a photograph.”

Mildred looked at him expectantly. He saw a comforting blank figure to the upper left and decided it would do instead.

“I will be represented by this shadow,” he pronounced.

“Franz, that won’t work. People want to know who you are! How can they even be sure you are real without a picture. And NO selfie. They can always tell.”

FK felt a damp sweat congregate about his midsection. They were here as well! No wonder the President of the Bronx Adjusters Association had gazed so knowingly at the damning blotch of sleeve spinach last night! If he was identified on this mechanism by portrait and made his sad plea for gainful work known to the world, if he advanced his case in the face of a dozen, a score, a thousand refusals, what might rise up against him?

Throwing the deathly screen to the ground, FK fled the dairy bar and began to run, run, run. Upon reaching the market for fish known as Fulton’s, he secreted himself into the storage area of a vessel shipping off to Liverpool. Armed with ample hard tack and jerky, notepaper, pens, and ink, he gratefully made his way east across the waters of space and time, back to the relative peace and tranquility of his family home in 1912 Prague. He would venture out no more!