Everyone’s talking shite. I’m just breathing it in.

There’s a certain flicker before the faces appear — that humming silence between “Connecting…” and confession. A séance of the semi-employed. The host admits spirits from the waiting room. Cameras shimmer to life like candles in a storm. We smile like taxidermy. Someone says, “You’re on mute.” Of course we are. We’ve been muted for years.

Each square a tiny tomb: last year’s intern, still haunting the invite; a VP who vanished mid-layoff but remains in the calendar like an unpaid ghost; the silent watcher with no camera, no pulse, just initials floating like ashes. Somewhere, a broadband prayer fails to ascend. “Can you see my screen?” they ask. We can see your soul buffering.

The backgrounds blur, but the haunt is sharp. Kitchen tables disguised as offices, ambitions disguised as bandwidth. We nod, we echo, we fade. The séance continues. The living pretend to work. The dead pretend to care.

The Apparitions.

The Observer.

Camera off, microphone muted, energy drained to grayscale. Their box a void — initials like a tombstone. Occasionally, a flicker: the rustle of existence, the hint of breath. No one remembers inviting them, but they’re always there. Watching the living rehearse relevance.

The Echo.

They speak only in déjà vu. Everything they say has already been said, somewhere else, by someone else. Their lag is existential. Their affirmations come half a second too late, like a delayed ghost clap. They nod at themselves in agreement. The algorithm loves them.

The Overlit.

The ring light hums like an exorcism lamp. Skin polished to perfection, soul pixelated to dust. They curate their grief through filters. Their smile, a product demo for human emotion. Behind the glow, you can almost hear the whisper: “Please validate my bandwidth.”

The Disconnected.

Frozen mid-sentence, eyes pleading through digital static. They reappear three minutes later, still talking, unaware time has moved on. Their career, too, lags behind. Their Wi-Fi password is hope.

The Reorged.

No one knows who invited them. They were made redundant two restructures ago. Yet here they are, profile photo from 2020, chiming in with spectral enthusiasm. “Let’s circle back,” they say, to people who don’t exist anymore.

The Host.

Summoner, jailer, priest. Keeps muttering about “efficiency” while staring into the void of breakout rooms. No one volunteers to facilitate; everyone pretends not to hear. The host is the loneliest ghost of all — condemned to End Meeting for All until eternity resets.

The Fade-Out.

The meeting ends. Or so we believe. The squares vanish, but the ghosts linger. Notifications blink like candles in the dark. Chat windows unopened, links unread — they hum with the memory of obligation.

We close our laptops, step away from the screens, and feel the lingering pulse of pixels in our veins. The Observer still watches from the corner of our mind. The Echo repeats in our subconscious. The Overlit’s smile is etched behind our eyelids. The Disconnected freezes mid-breath, forever buffering. The Reorged drifts through our calendar invites like dust.

We are haunted by what we gave, what we lost, and what was never truly ours to begin with. And tomorrow, we return. To summon again. To mute, to nod, to pretend.

In the age of remote work, every meeting is a séance — and sometimes, the dead reply.

– Tom Kite.