The Network
He woke with a start, disoriented and damp with sweat. The room was gray—gray walls, gray floor, gray ceiling—and utterly featureless except for a single flickering bulb dangling from a frayed cord overhead. He had no memory of how he got there. The air was still, the kind of stillness that presses against the skin.
Then he saw them.
At first, it was the silence that made him notice. No shuffling of feet, no murmurs—just dozens of figures standing stock still, staring at him. A claustrophobic crowd filled the room, shoulder to shoulder, faces illuminated by the sickly light. They all looked familiar. Too familiar.
“Erik!” A voice rang out, shattering the silence. It was unmistakable: the booming timbre of Jeff, the tech recruiter who had once ghosted him after three rounds of interviews. Jeff stepped forward, a grin splitting his face unnaturally wide. “We need to circle back on that opportunity from 2017!”
Erik’s stomach churned as the room seemed to tighten around him. Another figure pushed forward. It was Linda, the instructional design manager he hadn’t spoken to in years. Her eyes glittered with a manic intensity. “Did you ever get my message about synergy, Erik? We need to touch base ASAP.”
Before Erik could respond, another voice chimed in. Then another. And another. Each one sharper, more insistent, as if competing for dominance.
“Remember me? I endorsed you for Python!” “Hey Erik, got a moment to discuss a revolutionary SaaS platform?” “Erik, I’ve been meaning to connect. Let’s hop on a quick call.”
They closed in, a sea of LinkedIn avatars made flesh, their faces warped versions of their profile photos. The edges of the room blurred, and it felt as if the walls were melting away, replaced by a swirling vortex of connections, recommendations, and unsolicited pitches.
“STOP!” Erik shouted, but his voice was swallowed by the cacophony.
Jeff leaned in again, his grin twisting into something sinister. “You’re only as good as your network, Erik. You know that, don’t you?”
The words reverberated in his skull. He tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. They pressed closer, their questions and demands growing more abstract, more nonsensical.
“Do you think your skills are still relevant in today’s market?” “Are you open to work, Erik?” “How can I add value to your brand?”
A hand grabbed his shoulder—then another, and another. Erik was dragged toward the center of the crowd, where a single glowing laptop sat on the floor. Its screen displayed his LinkedIn profile, every section pulsing as if alive: Experience, Skills, Recommendations. The Connect button blinked with hypnotic urgency.
“You need to update this, Erik,” Linda hissed, her breath hot against his ear. “You’re not optimizing your potential.”
The crowd chanted now, a frenzied mantra: Optimize. Network. Engage. Grow.
Erik fell to his knees, the laptop screen growing brighter and brighter, until the room was bathed in a cold, sterile glow. The figures towered over him, their faces blurring into a single, indistinguishable mass. He reached out, desperate to close the laptop, but his hands froze in midair.
The screen flickered and then displayed a message in bold, corporate blue:
“You have reached your connection limit.”
A low, guttural laugh rippled through the crowd, and the walls began to close in. Erik screamed, but the sound was sucked into the void. The last thing he saw before the gray swallowed him was his own profile picture—smiling, polished, and utterly trapped.
When he woke again, the room was empty, but the laptop remained. Its screen glowed faintly in the dark, waiting.