Synergeist: The Haunted Cubicle (16 page)

He typed a message asking if she was there.

She was so low on energy. She created, “y,” for yes.

He asked why she left.

She neared the end of her power. “ned enrgy.”

Martin paused and then asked if he could help. He couldn’t help with the power, but he could help with later typing by showing her all the keys. She knew the common ones, but there were some she didn’t. You never know when you might need one of them. Besides, it was an excuse to have him stay in her cubicle a while. She created, “Type all keys.”

That confused him. Finally he asked her if she wanted him to type every possible key.

She entered, “y.”

He was extremely thorough. He showed her every possible combination. Even some she didn’t think did anything. He deleted all the gibberish and entered that he was finished.

She created, “<3” with her last bit of energy.

He typed, “Millie?”

She didn’t have enough juice to respond. Perhaps she would in a few minutes. The last few ergs of the sun’s creative energy flowed in through the window. That would end soon as it rose higher in the sky and the building blocked it.

Martin created a new user and a screen saver for someone name Yolanda Westridge. He had previously placed items about the cubicle: cups, papers, picture frames and other things. Now she realized why. He was giving the appearance that someone occupied the space; someone named Yolanda. Clever. She had seen managers and building resource people wandering around with clipboards looking for an empty cubicle when they needed one. If they thought this one was inhabited, they would move on and find another. There were plenty due to the years of “right sizing,” no need to check the official list.

He finished and sat there a minute looking at the screen, thinking or perhaps waiting to see if she would create another message. He picked up the statues, began to put them back in her box of things, hesitated, then held the pair up by their bases and inspected them. After studying them a minute, he put them with his stuff and took the pair with him when he left.

It tickled her that he admired them enough to want them for his own. She felt validated and flattered when someone truly wanted her work. Her joy morphed into panic when he carried them out of her cubicle, and she felt her Millie Field decrease significantly. It was still adequate to support her, but would it stand up if the big bad wolf came knocking?

The sun’s beam withdrew across the floor toward the window as the sun climbed the sky. She could no longer bask in its rays and stay within her protective envelope. She had little energy in the tank. There wasn’t anything affecting the living world that she could do without it and she was afraid to extend her vision outside her Millie Field.

She had her Spider-Sense turned up full. Briefly she fantasized that at some point Martin would come to her world as well. Could she survive that long? Was it possible to have overlapping fields so that the two of them could be together for eternity? She shook that off as dreamy schoolgirl nonsense. She sulked and listened to the sirens’ Song of Creation. Listened and prepared herself to make the choice.

Somewhere in the small hours, long before even the early birds began to arrive, Millie’s alarm went off. A panicked scan of the perimeter showed that whatever was observing her was not nearby. The observer could be anywhere, using the interconnectedness of all things as Millie did, to view anything anywhere.

It was unsettling. She thought the ability to see anything anywhere was an amazing gift, but now that she realized it also meant she could be observed anywhere and anytime. She no longer felt like Mighty Millie, but rather like a fish in a bowl.

Beyond the fact that she was being observed she knew the chosen viewpoint. She saw how the observation could be traced back through weft and weave of the connections of everything, back to the source. Even using the network to make an observation affected the network, and she saw the effect, like the vibrations traveling down a spider’s web, informing the web-master that a new victim had arrived. She didn’t dare follow it, afraid that she might find the beast on the other end, watching her.

I wear the chain I forged in life... I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.

―
From
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens

Martin drank two Red Bulls on the way to work. His stomach protested. Too much Bull and not enough sleep. Everything had that dreamlike quality you get about 3 AM.
Today’s experiment concerns the effect sleep deprivation has on the time it takes the subject to complete the maze.

When he came through the last door into the big open room that held his office at the center of the labyrinth, he was assaulted by the theme from “Rocky” blaring over the speakers. Not that he hated this particular tune, but anything blaring at that moment would have been obnoxious.

The area was likewise visually offensive, decorated in garish bunting and helium balloons in the corporate colors. The pods of cubicles occupied by the direct marketing sales representatives were festooned with posters proclaiming:
Sales Sharks are number one!!!
and
MARKETING MONSTERS RULE!!!
The employees stood, pumping their fists in the air to the beat. Around the fringes less enthusiastic sales reps half-heartedly performed the ritual dance. Beyond them, the outright heretics skulked in the shadows with their arms crossed, looking like someone farted in the elevator. A stage had been constructed along the wall. The company performance charts and graphs that usually decorated the wall had been replaced with a giant banner emblazoned with the latest marketing slogan. A table with urns of coffee and stacks of what smelled like breakfast sandwiches stood next to the platform.

Martin stood, momentarily mesmerized by the madness. It was one of their sales rallies. These festivities would go on all morning. The song ended and cheering began. The Regional VP of marketing went to the microphone on the platform and waved her arms to stop the cheering.

She delivered a few worn out marketing aphorisms about meeting customer’s needs and acting as if it were impossible to fail. Martin considered sliding over and snagging a chicken biscuit from the pile.

With a flourish she introduced the MARKETING MONSTERS, who were to perform a “hilarious” skit entitled: “How Not to Make the Sale.” Chicken biscuit be damned, he was not going to expose the thin thread of his sanity to one of their skits; time for the headphones. As he made his way through the marketing madness toward E6 on the other side of room, he heard a sales rep smacking gum and generally being rude to another rep portraying the earnest, prospective customer.

Martin checked the copier. When he reached his desk he briefly surveyed the area to see if there was a message from Millie. He didn’t think she was likely to leave any such messages since she could use the computer. But he didn’t want to miss it if she had. He saw none. He booted up his computer, eager to see if Millie had left something there. From what he had seen her do on the computer in her cubicle, he didn’t think she would have any problem using email or instant messaging. While it cranked through its start up routine, he put on his noise-cancelling headphones, plugged them into his smartphone and chose his playlist entitled “The Apocalypse.” There were no messages from Millie, only the usual corporate emails and a reminder of the conference call.

Crap
, he had forgotten about the Conference Call of Ill Foreboding. Maybe it was better he had forgotten because he hadn’t spent the weekend worrying about it. He took off his headphones. A “pump you up” dance number he didn’t recognize blared from the other side of the room. He put on his telephone headset. Even though it was over an hour until the scheduled time, he dialed into the conference bridge to see if it was working. He punched in the many necessary codes and a computerized voice announced that the conference awaited its moderator. He took the headset off and laid it on his desk, leaving the line open. Frequently there were problems getting into the bridge when there were large conference calls. A cheer went up from the marketeers. The headphones went back over his ears. “Please bury me with it. I don’t need none of that Mad Max bullshit.”

While time inched toward nine o’clock, he went through his morning emails, handled what he could, and flagged a couple to take care of later. When it finally got to be nine, he ended “The Apocalypse” and put on his telephone headset. He had to put his hand over the other ear because “YMCA” was playing so loud the bass rattled the coffee pots on the other side of the partition. Someone on the phone implored everyone to mute his or her microphones. Just sharing the joy, thought Martin, as he found the mute button.

When the background noises were finally silenced, the moderator dispensed with the opening formalities and then introduced the Vice President of Information Technology. From the moment the VP began speaking, it was obvious that she was reading a prepared statement. She spoke in gushing language of the corporation’s joy (as if the soulless beast could
feel
anything) in announcing a “strategic partnership” with AmeritSource. Martin could hear a microphone rubbing and a dog growling in the background. Someone had just joined the call from home. The VP paused a moment while the disturbance settled, cleared her throat, and then proclaimed that the alliance that would propel the company into the future, reducing expenditures and allowing the company to focus on its core competencies. He knew it was corporate doublespeak for outsourcing.

The speaker concluded her remarks and introduced a “Facilitator” from Human Resources. The officious facilitator announced that they would receive packages in their email informing them as to their status within the hour. They would also be invited to an appropriate informative “transition” meeting. He concluded the call and closed it down before anyone could say anything.

Martin pulled off the headset. The marketing jamboree was still going strong. He put his headphones back on.

He wondered what he could find out about this AmeritSource Company. It only took a little searching and reading to find out that they were a US subsidiary of a huge Indian IT company and that surprise, surprise, the CEO was a former CIO of Martin’s company. People in IT were familiar with the game. They were contracted to take over parts or all of a company’s corporate support systems and maintenance. They would take some of the employees with them (for knowledge transfer) and the company would “right size” the rest. The chosen few would be run ragged until the contract company was comfortable either shipping the work overseas or delegating it to an endless merry-go-round of newly hired wage slaves who would take the jobs for a year or so because they couldn’t find anything else.

An email slid into his in-box with no more fanfare than a reminder to contribute to the monthly coffee fund.
Which will it be
, Martin wondered,
the highway or the hard way?

The email informed Martin that he had been offered a position at AmeritSource. Regardless of whether he accepted their offer, his “separation” would occur a week from Friday. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a conga line as it snaked past his cubicle. There were links to various “transition resources” and an invitation to a “transition meeting” the next day in the big conference room.

Martin was numb; years of top performance and this is what he got. Sold like an old mule to the glue factory. It was not that he was particularly fond of his job, but he felt betrayed.

Suddenly the music blasting from his headphones annoyed him as much as the party going on around him. He had to get out of there, or his head would explode. He took off his headphone, stood, and started to leave his cube when he nearly collided with Wesley.

Wesley had on one of his signature grins. “Let’s either get out of here or spike the punch.”

Martin said nothing; he was in no mood for frivolity. He headed down the aisle, through the pep rally and out of the building in the most direct path possible. Wesley followed without a word to his car but broke the silence by shouting “Shotgun!” before he got in. Normally that would have amused Martin. It was too early for lunch, so they went to a local 24-hour pancake place and found a booth in the back. Wesley cheerfully observed Martin’s silence.