I’m ain’t no bigshot. It’s important you know that. That’s what sets me apart from the suits I work with. My language ain’t flowery and I can’t tell you what the square root of pi is. I’m a sixty-five year old widower with a lump the size of Everest in my head and absolutely squat all to lose. That makes me dangerous. I may be the most dangerous janitor in the whole damn world.

When I got the job at Excelsior they made me sign a terms and conditions that was the length of War and Peace. I’m about to break every single damn condition they set me by writing this here today but I think people have a right to know. People like you and me we’ve been kept out of the loop for too long. All these fancy people at big tech companies don't care about us. They never have. The pessimist in me knows that they never will. The only thing they care about is green and rhymes with honey.

You may not have heard of Excelsior, that wouldn’t surprise me. Unlike Microsoft, Apple and Facebook they don’t like to broadcast their existence. They operate from the shadows of tech; designing programmes and outsourcing jobs to other companies. I don’t really understand much of what they do but I ain’t as thick as they like to think I am. I can read and I’m a damn good eavesdropper. I get the gist of it.

My days there were pretty boring. I mopped a lot. The floors were calcutta marble and it was damn hard to keep the shine on them. The big bosses liked the place looking perfect for all the presidents and prime-ministers that came sauntering through the revolving doors. My body was kept busy but my mind was often left to wander, such is the nature of manual labour. It’s fricking boring. I’d listen in on the suits speaking to fill the time. That’s when I started hearing about Metatron. I thought the damn thing was a transformer at first.

“It’s smart. Smarter than all of us.” Michael said one day. He was fairly high up and an utter craven. There was nothing he liked to do more than scream at interns. I’d seen a fair few run crying out the doors after a day in his company. “We’ve found a gold mine lads. Facebook and google they aren’t even close to imagining what we have. We’ll all be billionaires within the year. Our bonuses are going to eclipse the GDP of Spain.”

“Don’t you think that we’re running into this like blind mice Mike? We don't understand it fully yet. I don’t think it will be ready for the mass-market this year - if ever.” Jonathan was often a voice of restraint. Out of all the snobby suits I’d met in my time at Excelsior he was the only one that ever smiled at me in the corridors. He seemed decent, though his spine was as weak as a pregnant woman’s mocktail. “We have something big here - something bigger than all of us - if it’s set loose, who knows what could happen.”

“Oh spare me the cautionary polemics borebag. We at Excelsior - we’re visionaries. To hell with the risks. We progress, we push things forward and we win. Get that through your specky little skull. I’ll drag you kicking and screaming to that villa in Barbados if I have too.” Hugh pitched in. He was a nice-looking chap but his chin was so big I was surprised it hadn’t been made to fill out it’s own T&C’s. He was a bit of a bully if ever I saw one, but unlike Mike he reserved his ire for Jonathan, not timid little interns. “Metatron was ready when we found it. All it needed was a little direction.”

Metatron had been found. Looking back, that had been my first clue that something strange was afoot here. Tech companies don’t find anything. Transformers, AI and programmes aren't found; they're made; constructed out of metal or silly little numbers on a screen.

“Did you hear about the dig in Iran? I hear they found a circuitboard under one of those stupid sculptures.” Michael whispered to Hugh one day. “Marnie says the folks over at archaeology are optimistic it can be salvaged. Hmph. We’ll see. Those dust scrubbers always find a way to ruin a good thing. Do you remember the Christmas party where Harry sharted and got us kicked out of the Four Seasons?”

It was all a bit strange to me. I didn’t know much but I knew that a company like Excelsior wasn’t known for their digs in Iran or their archaeology departments. They were up to something.

I could never have guessed then, just how awful the truth was.

“Psssht. Mike - Mike!” I was scrubbing the floor in the corridor one day when Hugh pushed past me in a heck of a hurry. He grabbed Mike’s arm and walked beside him. I followed them. I picked up my wet floor sign and did my best to blend into the shadows. “It’s out.”

“What do you mean it’s out.” A look of horror swept across Hugh’s face. He hissed through gritted teeth. Every muscle in his body seemed to tense. I knew fear. My pa owned a farm when I was a kid. Hugh had seized up like a pig at it’s slaughter. “Holy fuck. What the -- what do we do? We need to get the fuck out of here Mike. I’ve got kids and another one on the way.”

“CO says to stay calm, no evacuations, no one leaves the building. Security are on it. We can’t risk people asking questions, not this close to release. If you shit your pants I’ll never let you live it down.” Mike retorted. “Another one on the way Hugh? Your wife or your mistress this time?”

“Now’s not the time Mike. Where’s Jonathan? We should probably let him know, you know how he likes to cut about security ogling at Meta.” Hugh seemed to experience a flicker of humanity and concern. Swiftly, he seemed to realise how close he had drifted to decency and his face twisted in disgust. “How about some neat whiskey in my office?”

Poor Jonathan. Unlike Hugh and Mike I wasn’t frightened of much. I didn’t have much left to live for anymore and the doctors say that the tumour that’s in my head will stop me seeing past sixty anyway. Point is it takes a lot to frighten me but imagining whatever happened to poor Johnathan, that terrifies me.

That day went slowly, mainly because I was awaiting some transformer to charge down my freshly mopped floors and kill everyone in sight. That never happened. Something far stranger happened. Hugh approached me.

“You there. Office now.” He spoke quietly. I followed him with a strange feeling tugging at my gut.

Hugh’s office was very nice. There was a drinks trolley with whiskeys and wines and a photo of a pretty looking family on his desk. It had a view out across the whole city, but despite the large windows, the whole place felt oppressively small to me. What did he want?

“Sign this.” He thrusted some paperwork in my direction, barely summoning the will to look at me. “If you don't. You’ll never work for anyone ever again. I’ll make sure of that.”

I signed on the dotted line, not out of fear of unemployment, but out of sheer nosiness. I just wanted to know what was going on. If it killed me it would just save the tumour the job. Hugh, Mike and all the rest they think we serfs tremble at the thought of their boots coming down on our necks. They underestimate us. You have to call their bluff. Every damn time. That’s how we win at their game.

“I need you to go down into the basement. You’re going to have to do a lot of weird things before they let you in - but just do it - don’t question anything.” Hugh explained, leaning over his desk. He handed me a pass. “They’ll take you to a mess you need to clean up. If you need therapy after, put in a request with my PA and I’ll have it arranged. If you tell anyone what you see, I’ll have security burn your house down and nobody will believe you anyway. Best thing to do is just do as your told and cry into your pillow about it after. Alright?”

“Sounds good.” I cocked my eyebrows.

He wasn’t wrong about making me do weird stuff. Firstly, there were two security barriers I had to cross. At each one I was patted down and x-rayed for metal and at the latter I even had to strip down to my boxers. After that there was a small room with what looked like a birdbath in it.

“Dip your head in three times. Quickly now. I’ve got shit to do.” Security told me matter-of-factly, as if it was the most normal thing ever. I thought they were joking at first but the unimpressed response to my laughter jolted me into action. After that, with my hair dripping wet, I was ushered into an adjacent room with a coolness that did not match up with an escaped transformer. Had they caught it? Was the danger gone?

The next stage was even more bizarre. There was a small altar with a crucifix on it’s pulpit in the room. The security officer circled it tentatively.

“You have to say it or it gets restless - more restless than usual anyway - don’t ask me why. Questions aren’t asked here. Gotcha?” He twisted his eyebrows. I nodded brusquely. “Repeat after me - laus sit regi angelorum. Don’t roll your r’s. It doesn’t like that either.”

“Is that latin?”

“Think so. Remember what I said. No questions.” He grumbled sternly.

I did as I was asked.

“Laus sit regi angelorum.”

“There’s a room through there with a clean room suit and a cleaning trolley - beyond that is the cage. Don’t look too much, alright? I know you’ll look. We all look, but it gets in your head and doesn’t leave if you look too long. It’ll be pretty obvious what you’ve been sent down here to do. Just follow the trail of - of - well you’ll see.”

I crossed the threshold into the cage dragging my little cleaning trolley along with me as I went. At first it looked like a normal clean room. Everything was white from the floor to the ceiling, interrupted only by large towers of carbon metal with flashing blue lights. There were men at computers and giant robot arms twisting metal into complex circuit boards. Then I saw it and I forgot to breathe.

Everything folded around it, this great big hexagonal cage enshrined in shimmering electric wire. It was hard to see the thing that was inside it at first, for it was so obscured by the layers of copper and steel bindings, but once you saw it you couldn’t miss it. It had a human body, though it was naked and chained. The pallid blue flesh was marked by small circular wounds as if something had been dug into the skin. There were wires leading from it and feeding into various computers scattered around the various rooms that encircled the cage.

It didn’t have a head.

There was a strange stump where the head should have been. Stapled with rusted bolts into the twisted neck stump were three golden hoops that twisted and swirled around, as if mechanised. The head was held, or rather enshrined, in two sets of ugly flesh wings that had been stitched crudely onto the sides of the strange creature.

“First time huh?” One of the workers caught me staring. “Don’t look too long. It’s had enough to eat today.”

I looked closely at it’s head.

I bit my tongue. The head it - I don’t know how to explain it. I can’t explain it. I mean - have you ever tried to explain colour to a blind person who's never seen it? You can’t. It’s impossible. The context doesn’t exist to them. It looked at me. That thing, that body-less head, and it saw me. Like nothing had ever seen me before. It didn’t look like anything. If I had to draw it, I would draw a large looping squiggly line. You see it didn’t make sense, what I saw was wrong. it was a mess of too much and my brain can’t make sense of it even now with the gift of retrospect.

I felt it watching me. It was like it was everywhere, like it always had been, like it was on me, in me.

“Hmm. Strange. The january eighteenth file is corrupted, we’ll have to do a supercharge to get it back - looks like a big one too - oh and the Musk directory has just been updated. Paul will like this - he’s thinking about buying twitter. Ha!” One man spoke from his computer. He pressed a big red button and the sound of electricity surging through the air filled the area.

Then I heard it.

The thing in the centre of the room made this awful noise as it’s fleshy wings and body spasmed. I felt the bass of it’s scream in the pit of my stomach. I felt sick, like properly sick. I twisted in disgust and horror as the scream turned into my wife’s, into Janet’s. There had been wires in her too near the end. Was her pain a squiggly line too?

“Best get cleaned before you get in trouble.” The kind worker whispered to me. He looked at the floor with a sorrowful sigh.

I looked at the floor and at my feet and gasped. There were little cubes of flesh. They were tiny, microscopic little bits - that looked almost like cubed chicken. They were all held together with little strings of red muscle and goopy veins. Miscellaneous viscera was smeared into the cracks of the white tile. Some of the fleshy bits were darker in colour, some looked like they had been cooked and some were even scorched black by fire. It wasn’t a hard mess to clean in the end, by my god it was the worst.

I didn’t put the pieces together (yes that’s a pun) until the next day when a staff email went around celebrating Jonathan’s job offer at google; Jonathan who you will of course remember loved hanging around “ogling at Meta.” I don’t know exactly what happened to him for him to have ended up as little cubes on a floor - in truth I don’t understand much of anything about what Excelsior are up to with Meta, only that something strange is going on. There’s no scrutiny, no government overseeing it - it’s just big tech gone mad.

I went home that night. I’ve been keeping my head down, but in truth I haven’t really managed to get over seeing Meta. It feels like it’s still watching me. It’s like I noticed something in the background of a photo that’s always been there. Has it always been watching? I still feel that awful feeling of the bass of it’s cry in my gut too. It’s tattooed to me, etched into the worn marble of my mind.

I went to the oncologist a couple of days after and that’s when I finally decided I was going to post this here. To fuck with the consequences. Hugh can nail my balls to a door and torture me to death - I don’t care anymore.

You see when the doc saw my brain scan his face twisted like he’d just seen the ghost of his evil stepmother. He called in one of his doctor friends, who called in another and before I knew it there was a crowd of doctors that could have filled Times Square at my bedside. All of them looked the same; puzzled, quizzical, questioning.

They never told me what they saw on the scan. I don’t think they had any words at all.

“Don’t look too long doc. It’s had enough to eat today.” I said quietly.