Eight Lies

My income exceeds $5,000,000 a year.

I have a prestigious job working for a law firm, handling cases from a technical point of view.

Usually, I'm the one doing the work, while the lawyers stand around and talk.

But that's okay, because I do the job better than they do... and I don't want the publicity.

Occasionally my coworkers treat everyone in the department to dinner, and sometimes I pitch in, and we drink wine and discuss the ludicrous cases our boss hands us.

They find me glamorous, keen and think that I'm going to own the company someday.


This existence is a lie.


I play video games, received my degree over the internet without doing any work, drink near-dangerous amounts of alcohol and pretend that my life is working out the way I want it to. Yes, it's comfortable, and I have a big house with four dogs... but I always wanted to be an actor. That was my dream, as a sandy-blonde-haired brat in North Hollywood.

I was born Gayle Donna Conner, at a Los Angeles hospital in 1985.

My parents were in the movie business, as an executive and a visual artist, respectively. My early life was defined by warmth and sunshine. They would take me to the park every weekend for a picnic, unless dad was working on something big. And yes, my mother was the executive, and my dad was a storyboard artist. Mom's descendants were from Finland, and dad's from Wales.

It was a very American start. Chicken, apple pie, fried rice, hamburgers.

I wasn't engaged by school; I was one of those "alternate education" kids. Bright -- and that's being modest -- but not able to learn the way everyone else could.

They were very supportive of me. I guess that's a blessing, since they didn't jump to the belief that I was possessed by a demon. Utilizing a tutor, I actually learned more than all the kids who were just going to school.

When the technology boom really hit, and there was a computer in every home, I was right on top of it. Learning the code as it was being created. Building my own computers. My parents came to me for technical help.

Then, college.

What had worked for me before didn't do the trick anymore, and no one knew why. My grades plummeted and I dropped out because of depression -- and anger management problems that made me a menace to my fellow classmates. My shining, successful parents didn't know what to do with me anymore, other than support me and hope for the best.

In between beating my classmates up, I slept with the broad majority of them, hoping for some kind of an emotional connection.

I had been grateful to my parents, but I had never really loved them. I wasn't capable.

Our psychologist said it was because of some sort of neglect, but I didn't know when that had happened; they had always been warm, loving and there for me.

There was this girl, one of my last real classmates in college, named Jill. She had hair that was like a polished penny, and a bright, "I'm going to be successful" smile. We slept together, on a particularly rainy night, and then she told me something no one else had.

She told me I was a loser with no future.

Shortly after, she kicked me out of her parents' house and then shut the door on me.

At that time, I thought she was angry because of how bad she was in bed, but that wasn't it. She didn't want to be connected to someone who wasn't going to "make it." At least, in her opinion. Later in the week she had a boyfriend who was going on to Harvard. Harvard Law School.

I turned to the place that had always accepted me: the world of computers.

When I had a plan, I spent more and more time out of the house, and told my parents that I was getting ready to transfer. I just went to an internet cafe. In reality, I was reading a lot of law books and getting a forged degree from a very nice gentleman who implanted me into the system. No professor knew me, but according to the records I attended that school for four years.

He called me Octavo, because I had told him eight lies when I first contacted him. One, that I was 21; two, that I was "earnest"; three, that I had a boring life; four, that my parents were humble and semi-poor; five, that I didn't drink; six, that I didn't smoke; seven, that I had cheap taste; and eight, that I never lied.

"It refers to the process of book binding," he told me, when I asked him what Octavo meant. "Eight binds."

Octavo stuck.

I moved, to an address near the school, and spent my time there. It was all very convincing.

When I came back I had the pleasure of seeing my parents nearly burst with pride, had a diploma in hand, had everything but the raw experience of actually attending Harvard.

That was okay. The more I had talked to the students there, as they would go off campus to eat or relax, I had realized almost none of them were learning more than I was off of books from the library.

Either they were dumb, or I was very, very smart. Being modest, I chalked it up to the latter.

Jill? Her boyfriend scrubbed out his second year. When I came back, she called me and asked if I wanted to get drinks; I told her to go screw herself.

I hold grudges.

My job was an easy gig to land. I'm good at pretending, and I can smile like a trained chimp if I need to. I started out as a paper-pusher, a nobody, and worked my way up the ladder without really trying.

I'm intelligent, and I know it, but I'm not going to use that intelligence for work. What do you think I am, a square?

(I'm an octagon.)

That's like using a great acting talent to teach other people to act: a complete waste.

However, sometimes the intelligence comes out when I'm not on my guard, and when that happens I usually get a raise.

When I first joined a number of my bosses made the impression that, if I engaged in carnal acts with them, they would promote me. In order to spite them, I would go where they said, get the men good and ready, and then pretend to be utterly obnoxious and a virgin. If that didn't deter them, I would start screaming "sexual harassment" at them until they ran.

They would be awkward at work on the following day, but I wouldn't care. Somewhere along the way, the executives nicknamed me Two-Face and the offers of unlawful promotion stopped.

A few of the girls at work who had heard the stories -- and gotten their promotions through sex -- took me out to dinner, for which I will always be confused. But one of them asked if I was into girls, and then she went to my home, and then I sicced one of my dogs on her.

That body was a pain in the ass to dump.

Yes, I know what you're thinking -- and you're right, I'm an atrocious human being. But I don't care. It's all fun and games with the rest of my extremely stupid species.

Well. Pike isn't stupid.

He got me my degree, he tolerates my presence at clubs sometimes, and occasionally I wonder why he really tolerates a girl who's at least fifteen years younger than him.

And then I think about that statement more closely, and stop wondering.

He tells me that he's not interested in that way, but you never really know, do you? He could be trying to make me feel worse about myself, since he told me before that I had an "ego the size of Moby's dick."

Yeah, he went there.

My life -- in the desert backwater of California -- is an odd one, I won't deny. But it's all I have. If anyone finds out what I've done in my life, and how many lies I tell on a daily basis, I won't have a job anymore.

And what about you?

Do you trust what I'm telling you?

I have a big fucking imagination, you know. If this is all I lie I'm telling you, and I was orphaned and raised by wolves, or raised by wildlife photographers -- how would you know?

You wouldn't.

But I did tell you eight lies.