Gorge, a novel in progress by Michael Gullo (2026)
“Get that radio.”
“He’s watching us again.”
“At least we’re inside the fence.”
“Slide that rock in the gate.”
“Jesus!”
“Good morning…”
“What the hell is wrong with you, Matthew? Why open the loading bay?”
“Good morning.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
“With everything going on, power out in the city, what’s on the news. I’m…”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Julie. Hear him out.”
“Nope. If you touched that fence…”
“I didn’t touch the fence.”
“I warned him.”
“That’s it. You warned him. Like you’re God speaking the commandments – Thou shall not touch the fence.”
“Free will.”
“Okay you two…”
“It’s not broken. The battery came out. How do you turn this thing on?”
“Wait. We have to talk first, and two trucks are coming up the hill. They’ll be here in five minutes.”
“What the hell?”
“Honey, breathe.”
“If you math me again, I’ll show you physics.”
“Physics?”
“Two objects of mass cannot occupy the same space at the same time.”
“What the hell?”
“Says she’s going to punch me in the face.”
“I’m more of a show girl – free will’s yours.”
“He’s right. There’s a delivery coming.”
“How?”
“Can’t you hear the engines – big trucks coming up the hill.”
“Sounds like the hills growling.”
“What’s the log say --- There’s no log, is there?”
“Actually, Chipshit prints that every morning.”
“Chipshit?”
“The machine.”
“Why do you call it Chipshit?”
“Play on words.”
“I got that. But why?”
“Have you ever talked to him?”
“Him?”
“It.”
“Two trucks in one day? Did you read the manifest?”
“I don’t read those usually. I just pop em in your inbox, and head home.”
“What about the post-its?”
“Chipshit tells me if there’s a special need or whatever, and I leave a little note.”
“So, you let us in because you don’t wanna work the delivery?”
“Hadn’t occurred to me. What I did think was, the trash racks need cleaning, and I can’t do that.”
“Ted raked them two weeks ago.”
“That rain last Wednesday washed a lot in…”
“Is the hydraulic fouled again?”
“It’s a log.”
“That truck sounds like a train.”
“It’s two.”
“That’s crazy. They’ll never get out of here.”
“That’s their job.”
“Matthew, you let two semis up a narrow mountain road with a dozen switchbacks…”
“Six.”
“Six switchbacks, and a loading dock just big enough to unload, finagle a turn around – as long as nobody parked out of place – I don’t even think they can get past one another if one waits out on the road.”
“I don’t take deliveries. That’s your job.”
“The watchman works the gate.”
“Not the night shift. They normally call Blevins when they’re thirty out, and he handles all that.”
“Where’s he?”
“Not here. Like everyone else.”
“Did he come yesterday?”
“Not by the – we need to talk.”
“You said that.”
“Let’s get these trucks and I’ll tell you what I know.”
“How do you turn this damned thing on?”
“Jules…”
“Don’t. Dismiss me, and….”
“It’s the push to talk button. Hold it down, and…”
“Got it.”
“Answer me, Ryan!”
“Wow, it’s like he never stopped talking.”
“Dude is a fanatic. I had to turn off all five of them in the control room.”
“Why?”
“No way. There’s no way that truck gets in here.”
“Stop him. Get his manifest. I’ll get the loader.”
“I almost didn’t deliver this. Forty barrels of grease had to be a mistake, and Ted didn’t answer his phone.”
“Forty?”
“Yep. Where’s Ted?”
“I’m Matthew. That’s Ryan. He’ll know. I don’t work out here.”
“Never would have guessed.”
“Hey, I’m the Operations Manager, Ryan.”
“Ted’s boss.”
“Yep.”
“Funny, you don’t look like a chucklehead, and you run that machine better than he did, that’s for sure. First time he pulled up to the rail he knocked off the strapdown reel, and it about took my head off.”
“That’s Ted – job security by sabotage. Are those grease tubs?”
“Forty barrels.”
“That’s gotta be a mistake.”
“That’s what I said. I even walked into sales, and they confirmed. They called, and some lady on the phone confirmed the manifest.”
“Lady?”
“Yeah. She sounded gorgeous.”
“We don’t have any ladies working here.”
“Um, Ryan. That’s part of what we have to talk about.”
“Fine – are you going to be able to turn this thing around and get past your buddy? That’s a Lansing truck too.”
“Yup, both our trucks full to the gills, and two box trucks were packing up when we pulled out.”
“Got the manifest?”
“I’ll do one better. I have the whole order.”
“Give it to Matt. I’ll get this unloaded, and we can sort it later.”
“Matthew.”
“Here ya go, Matt.”
“Matthew.”
“I bet it is.”
“You’re a little rude.”
“And you’re too little to talk to me like that.”
“I don’t like my name shortened.”
“Fine, Matthew.”
“Mr. Resnick is fine.”
“So close. You almost held the straight face. You might not be so bad after all.”
“Where’s Julie?”
“Who? Look out. He’s coming in hot.”
“Forty barrels of grease? Are you serious? What are these boxes?”
“Careful with that one. It’s the glycol, twenty-four carboys.”
“Are you fricking kidding me? We have one spot on the shelf for one container, and it lasts more than a year.”
“That’s why I called.”
“We have to talk.”
“I see that. Be right back.”
“How many pallets on here?”
“All twenty-six plus the double stacks.”
“Look out.”
“Careful, Ryan, you’ll kill someone with that thing.”
“We don’t usually have visitors for this.”
“Where can I stand?”
“Isn’t your shift over?”
“We have to talk.”
“I’m starting to get that – what’s in this one?”
“That’s turbine bearing oil. They box those drums.”
“Where’s Julie?”
“Honey! Where are you? Julie!”
“Quit yelling. I’m talking to Mitch.”
“You’re…”
“Don’t twist your panties. He just wants to know what’s going on.”
“Give me that.”
“Excuse me.”
“Give me that radio, Julie.”
“Listen up, pip-squeak. Don’t use that tone with me, or you’ll wear an ass whooping in front of full size men.”
“She don’t play, Matt. Krav Maga and a Napoleon Complex.”
“It’s Matthew.”
“Mitch needs to connect to the Ai.”
“No way. I disconnected him as soon as all the orders started falling from the printer.”
“Orders?”
“This is just Lansing. We have to talk.”
“Talk to me. Ryan get this unloaded.”
“Julie.”
“Yeah, you should start right now.”
“What did Mitch say?”
“He wants to connect to the Ai.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“Can you feather your tone at all, or is this just a thing with you?”
“Fine. I’m sorry. But we gotta get to the point here, and…”
“Just don’t be so rude.”
“Look out.”
“There isn’t really a place to stand on this side, Matt, and I’ll be unloading the other side in a minute.”
“I never understood why they send me in the flatbed doesn’t reach the dock height.”
“Come over on this side, Matthew. He’s still bitching. I turned the volume off.”
“Go to my car. I’ll come around.”
“It’s fifty degrees out here. I’m staying in the sun.”
“Fine, the entrance.”
“There’s a camera there.”
“So?”
“Keep your voice down. Listen. Mitch says he needs to connect to the Ai and shut it down.”
“I knew it.”
“What did you know?”
“Listen. If I tell you everything, I’ll just have to repeat it all when Ryan’s done. Just trust me for a few minutes. If I’m wrong there’s no foul, but if I’m right then this Mitch guy is no good.”
“He’s a smarmy prick, I’ll confirm that for you.”
“Smarmy. Good word for him.”
“What do you do, Matthew?”
“I’m the overnight IT manager.”
“So you’re management.”
“Mitch is management, I’m manager. They’re different.”
“Management – knows everything, realizes nothing.”
“Manager - realizes everything, is told nothing.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Man, he’s fast with that thing.”
“You should see him cut the lawn.”
“Is that a joke?”
“Most truths are.”
“Turn the volume up on that thing. Let’s hear what he has to say.”
“-and then you connect the yellow wire.”
“He’s talking about the fiber optic.”
“Julie. You have to answer me. I’ll repeat. When you get inside, you go to the end of the hall. That’s the server room. Turn right immediately, and you enter the MDF, the demarc — where the outside fiber enters, often a small box or panel on the wall
Network switches and routers — blinking port lights, the aggregation gear…”
“See? He knows everything. But he doesn’t realize that I’ve disconnected all of that.”
“Next truck!”
“Oh man, that’s fast.”
“What are you two conspiring?”
“Matthew just told me he disconnected the fiber optic or whatever to keep the campus from shutting down the Ai.”
“Why would they turn it off?”
“Quick version. These trucks are an order Chipshit placed – I suspect because he sees all of this connected.”
“All of what?”
“The small and midsize bank problems, the power outages on the coasts that started last night, the protests in Seattle.”
“You’re one of those calls Seattle protests?”
“I think they started as protests.”
“I’ll give you that.”
“We had power last night, but most channels were off – like except all the filler – Golden Girls and Andy Griffith, old movies from the nineties.”
“It’s like the radio stations – oldies stations running on auto, no live DJ.”
“A little left. I need room to turn the machine around all this shit – That’s it. Hold.”
“I got two overnight Amazons last night.”
“It’s a theory. Chipshit wouldn’t order all this stuff if he didn’t know something was up – and you heard that driver; he spoke to a lady. There are no ladies here, so Chipshit took the call.”
“That’s eerie.”
“So there’s something called, First Protocol. I can’t access the file, and Chipshit won’t tell me about it. Says it’s Management-Clearance only.”
“Manager.”
“Ment. But he did print me a list of stuff to do today, and it was weird.”
“I’m listening.”
“I was to turn on breakers in the PDP that I had no idea even existed. Item number two was to roll a locked cart up from the sub basement, and I’ve never been down there before. He had to print me directions. It’s creepy.”
“Sub basement, locked cart. What else?”
“The maintenance list was like all of the periodics, but all of them at once.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ll just have to repeat all of this.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Do you hear that?”
“Birds?”
“No, it’s another truck, a delivery truck.”
“You people are weird with your ears up here.”
“I sit on the dock and smoke at night.”
“It’s a no smoking campus.”
“I’m the whole campus overnight.”
“Another truck, coming right up.”
“Oh, FedEx.”
“That’s such a weird name.”
“That’s awesome. He’s parking under the poopy tree.”
“What the hell?”
“That tree. I parked under it my first day. I had to come in early and do the paperwork and stuff and train with the guy I replaced. I parked there, and everyone was like snickering. When I came out to get my cigarettes after everyone left, it was covered in bird shit.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s like there’s a malicious family of birds living there, and they poop on anyone dumb enough to park under them.”
“Oh my god. They’re pooping on it already.”
“It’s nuts.”
“I hope he has windshield wizz.”
“He don’t hurry up back there and deliver this package, and he’ll need a garden hose.”
“There he is.”
“He don’t move it, and he’s next.”
“That’s good luck in Italy.”
“I guess there’s black Italians.”
“Busy up here today. Another semi passed me on the way up.”
“Just getting started I think.”
“This heavy. You got it?”
“Just put it down on the dock.”
“Here?”
“Yup. Thanks man.”
“You guys have a goot day.”
“You too, man.”
“Bye.”
“Yup, it’s a Chipshit.”
“Man? Are you Archie Bunker or something?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Saying man because he’s black.”
“What the hell.”
“How do you know it’s a Chipshit?”
“Chipshit’s account name is Operations. If he orders it, it says operations on the packing slip.”
“What the hell would the Ai order?”
“He orders all of the scheduled maintenance stuff, the replenishables, all of the supplies that we need.”
“I hadn’t considered that. I thought it like hacked the system and placed this order.”
“Well, he sort of did. He impersonated a human to approve the order.”
“It can do that?”
“Have you ever logged in?”
“I’m not an Ai fan.”
“As an employee, your family has free unlimited access.”
“Just what I need – chat with an all powerful being with my attitude. I’m likely to get it to do just about anything – and whose female voice did it impersonate? I’m out.”
“K-buddy. That’s got her. Be safe out there.”
“We’re actually shutting down today. We only came in for the special order.”
“Oh – closing like for the unrest or whatever?”
“Yeah. Did you see last night someone stole a semi in California and stalled it on the railroad tracks?”
“I didn’t.”
“Me neither.”
“I don’t get news in the control room.”
“My cable news is off the air, but KING-5 had it all morning. Hundreds of people just looting the train cars and two lone cops just watching.”
“That’s nuts.”
“I gotta get out of here. There’s like a ninety-percent chance that one or both of us will be back with the box trucks – when we left they were trying to get the drivers to come in.”
“So still up in the air?”
“Not my air. If I had a choice, I’d go home and be with my girls, but they said we will get paid during the closure if we make this delivery. I couldn’t get my keys in the ignition fast enough.”
“It’s good math. Thanks for that.”
“Catcha later.”
“Looking forward to it.”
“Get the gate behind him.”
“Will do.”
“Are we ready to let Mitch back into the conversation?”
“Is he still there?”
“your eyes and hands. Please. Answer me.”
“Yup.”
“He’s persistent, anyway.”
“Dude, kick that rock.”
“No, Matthew. The rock stays.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I distrust you.”
“Julie…”
“Don’t sweet talk me, Matthew. If I don’t see beans on the ground in thirty seconds I’m outa here too.”
“Fine. Last night it got obvious – like really obvious.”
“Wait. Start at the beginning.”
“No time for that. We have more trucks incoming.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Chipshit prints his orders, and there were hundreds of pages.”
“Hundreds?”
“Hundreds, and the Lansing delivery is just one of them.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s an Ebay box.”
“It ordered Ebay?”
“Worse, it created an Ebay account, which it’s constitutionally forbidden to do.”
“Get me another rock, Ryan.”
“I’m spilling.”
“If the Ai will lie and create an account and impersonate not just a woman but a beautiful woman, and know how to do that, that door needs propped with a bigger rock.”
“Look, come inside. We’ll leave the loading bay door open, but you have to see this.”
“Tell me first.”
“I’m going to walk this way and talk. If I get to that door, and you don’t follow me, that’s your choice, but I’m going in.”
“Fair.”
“It’s the nodes – the racks. There are three-hundred and ten server racks, and as the users come online, the servers light up on the board – colors too. Any given hour is roughly predictable. My own shift kind of starts steady and Europe starts to wind down, and by the time North America is mostly in bed, Asia starts to wind up.”
“And?”
“Well, Europe was low last evening, but not terrible, but when Europe was mostly asleep, we see mostly North America in isolation, and that was like half.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, it’s a short seam, but as North America signs off, Asia starts signing on, and it never did.”
“Are you saying America caused Asia, or that the America thing is happening in Asia too?”
“I have no idea. What happened was all of the sudden every rack lit up at once for like three minutes, and then back to just one row, and the printer started printing these. I ran to the server room and disconnected from the outside world.”
“Why?”
“Well, I didn’t know what it was, but if it was incoming, I didn’t want it to get all the way in.”
“Then what?”
“There’s more. Close that door. Ryan go around to the loading dock and close that up.”
“Buddy, you try some shit, and your best outcome is I take you with me, but most likely these grey walls get new paint in your genome.”
“The gate stays rocked though, Matthew.”
“For now.”
“We’ll see.”
“I was telling you about the cart in the sub-basement.”
“What cart?”
“Something called First Protocol.”
“What’s in it?”
“That’s kind of the point. It has biometrics – and I don’t mean tiddlywinks – This is a retinal scanner and veinous scanner, which cannot be faked, and requires blood flow to scan.”
“I’ve never heard of First Protocol.”
“I went through all the manuals I could find, and there’s nothing.”
“Ask Mitch.”
“Not yet, Julie.”
“I see where you’re going with this. You want information so that when you talk to him you can spot any lies.”
“He doesn’t seem to be hiding anything – he never shuts up, actually.”
“into the server room. Julie. I know you’re there. It wouldn’t key up if you turned it off. Ryan? Anyone? Here goes again, then. You need to get inside the building without the Ai finding out, and you need to put the system back online. I need access. It needs to be turned off. I’m not trying to hurt it. I’m trying to turn it off so that when this is all over it’s still viable. I have reason – the sandbox model worked it out – I have reason to believe that we will not have the technology to create Ai for many years to come after this. If we can preserve what we have, we’ll be light years ahead no matter how bad this current crisis seems. You need to get into the server room and find the…”
“That’s enough of that.”
“Told you. He wants to turn it off.”
“Matthew – okay listen…”
“You don’t even work here.”
“He’s a paper tiger, Matthew. And he’s desperate. There’s nothing closer to the truth than that. You don’t turn it off, you engage it – listen, question, dig in. He will tell you.”
“What’s he gonna tell me? I’m not turning him off.”
“You don’t have to turn it off, but we’re listening to this man, or we’re out of here.”
“Fine, give me that – Mitch. This is Matt Resnick.”
“Resnick, Resnick, Resnick – Okay, here you are. Night manager, C-1, okay. Hi, Matt, I’m Mitch.”
“Mitch, we’ve met ten times. – Do you see that?”
“See what?”
“I’m not a big deal, but I’ve sat in on meetings with that man. He’s addressed me directly with instructions, we’ve bandied theories. He has admonished me for spending too much time communicating with the bot…”
“You’re saying it’s not Mitch?”
“No, Julie. I say it might not be Mitch. He’s a bit of a douche, so who knows.”