Of Two Minds

By Charles Hugh Smith

At some point you're willing to take a job, any job, just to break the dispiriting cycle of looking for work: hopeful application, positive interview, anxious wait, polite rejection, numbing disappointment. Getting tipsy and wandering onto the Golden Gate Bridge in a deep fog was an optional step six, and then it was back to step one again.

Six months of this Sisyphus routine had been especially frustrating to a software security guy like myself. Despite the sour economy, Silicon Valley recruiters were practically accosting security programmers like me as they walked to their cars in the Safeway parking lot, chips and salsa in hand; yet here I was with thirteen years experience and sterling recommendations, getting one great interview after another--and having the door slammed in my face each time.

I'd sunk through Foolish Paranoia--had an unknown enemy put a voodoo curse on me?--all the way down to the rock bottom of Grand Doubts: Was this just an extended run of bad luck, or had something gone irrevocably wrong in my life?

That evening I gathered up the newspapers and tossed them into the recycling bin by the front door. The help-wanted section was on top of the pile, and my eyes were drawn to a dried coffee ring from my mug in the upper-right corner. Inside the muddy round stain was a listing that I'd somehow missed that morning.

STRIKE OUT ON YOUR OWN. Lucrative and unusual position. Computer and psi experience a must. Apply in person Monday, May 3 only, 9 am to noon, 24 Bridgehead Road, San Francisco.

Garrett Trask would soon be focusing on two letters: AI -- and one word: death.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1438258690
• ISBN13: 9781438258690
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 294 Pages
• Weight: 0.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"