Synergeist: The Haunted Cubicle (2 page)

Somewhere deep inside, she already knew the answer to that question. Was she lying in bed at Baptist Memorial, full of tubes, experiencing an extended coma dream? This didn’t seem fluid enough to be a dream. Too strangely concrete.
Insanely delusional?
She felt too lucid, confused as hell but lucid. Crazy people probably always thought they were sane. Out-of-body experience? It didn’t mesh with any of the descriptions she had read. She floated, but the view did not resemble their descriptions.

Time to stop avoiding the obvious possibility. She didn’t feel dead. As if anyone but the dead knew how that felt. She didn’t want to consider it, but she definitely remembered the blackness closing in on her as she struggled to breathe.
Is this what comes after? The afterlife? Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? Sheol? Nirvana? Where the hell are the blessed angels? Or the god-forsaken devils? Someone with a few damn answers, please!

There was no one.
Freakin’ nothing but the freakin’ light show. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would please at this time, extinguish all smoking materials. Turn off your cell phones, dispose of any preconceived notions of the afterlife, and return your seat to the upright and locked position. Queue the spooky music. You’re on a plane ride straight into the Twilight Zone.

She felt another well-deserved spaz attack coming. Since her earlier hissy fit hadn’t cleared anything up or even provided the visceral satisfaction of physical exhaustion, she decided instead to try yoga. There weren’t muscles to stretch or any actual breathing going on, but she mentally went through the familiar ritual to find her center. She found it much easier than usual. Normally she struggled with meditation. Returning to the object of meditation was the problem. When she cleared her mind, ideas popped full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. Like Athena, her ideas were brilliant bad-asses and not to be ignored. Usually a brain storming frenzy resulted and not blissful peace.

Not this time. Without physical distraction or any use for mental ones, her mind stilled, completely unfocused but crystal clear. She watched everything, everywhere at once, as her yogi said, for the source of all light.

And there it was.

Not in any single direction, like the proverbial bright light at the end of a tunnel, but everywhere at once. It was in everything and everything was of it. Not frightening or awe-inspiring, it just was. To say
it
though, was not right, due to
it
being the singular case. Two distinct aspects existed simultaneously within The Everything. A cosmic yin-yang, the two were singing a song in two-part harmony. Forget that there was no actual sound. In her mind, they serenaded her with a duet.

The Blazing Star sang a frenzied song of exaltation, of raw creative power urging her to come and join the force that builds stars and galaxies. Together they would construct matter out of energy and tear elementary particles apart in a continuous cycle of generation and decay for eternity.

The Black Hole’s soothing song of peace suggested she throw off her metaphysical yoke to find the ultimate release. Accept its embrace, give herself to become the raw material of creation and become one with the universe in the most fundamental way, the ultimate upcycle.

Though as different as heavy metal and country, the two songs wove together in an exquisite counterpoint. They each were oh so sweet in their own way, promising so much and asking so little—only a choice. They made their cases, pulling her in her both directions at once. Ulysses strapped to the mast, she endured the Sirens’ song. Unlike the Sirens’ song, this song was not an irresistible compulsion, but a compelling invitation to make the ultimate exercise of free will. The smoothest sales pitches you ever heard. Each song offered a seductive promise that was hard to resist, but if she chose, then that (as they say) would be that. She was not ready to choose. The songs receded, but they didn’t disappear. They hung around in the periphery, just waiting to be called again to make their cases. Their chorus could be ignored but not forgotten.

Her meditation broken, she considered the implications. This madness, this delusion, this place, was the universal retention area. Soak in or evaporate. Call us when you decide. Two choices.

Two choices she knew of.
Are there others? Maybe not choosing. Is that possible? Are there other souls around that haven’t decided? What if I never pick? Then I guess I’d be stuck here in Neverland. A ghost.
She hated choosing. It was one of the many character flaws she kept in inventory. She took indecision to extremes unless forced. Breakfast consisted of yogurt and toast every morning, not because she loved it, but so she didn’t have to choose.

She didn’t have to pick now. Apparently the offer remained open for a time or maybe forever, with the advertisements buzzing in her ear for eternity. Thank God. Heh. Besides, there was a whole existence to explore here. Nothing like keeping busy to avoid a tough decision.

She made a 360-degree scan with the assumption that she saw a different version of a familiar reality. Accepting this assumption virtually confirmed it to be true. She recognized shapes as her cubicle and desk. Thankfully, her body was not sprawled on the floor. There must be a delay.
Ladies and gentlemen, a mandatory waiting period is required between death and resurrection, take a number and wait.
Three days is how long it takes, right?
She recognized the familiar aisles of her work place out beyond her immediate cubicle. Great. For whatever reason she was haunting her office. She supposed it was because she died there. At least now it wasn’t so uniformly beige
.
Different materials presented different patterns in a riot of colors. With time she supposed she would recognize the patterns’ connections to familiar objects.

As she looked around, she became comfortable reconciling most of what she saw with the more familiar world. She observed the monochrome flow of AC power moving through the wiring in the floor and the ceiling. The florescent lights tasted (tasted?) even flatter and colder than ever, but the people…

They glowed and pulsed in complex woven patterns of living energy, each as individual as fingerprints. Auras. She had always thought the talk of auras was either bologna or (if feeling generous) an overworked metaphor.
Dude, your aura is so totally blue today.
But there they were. She wondered if there were people (living people) who really could sense what she saw.

She studied one of the auras, sitting at their desk. With a pinch of self-delusion, she pretended the choice was happenstance. He sat at his desk across the main aisle from the printer/copier and behind the column which cohabitated his cubicle.

Martin was the latest in a string of men she admired from afar. Admiration continued from afar until they noticed her admiring them, they demonstrated they were not worthy, or they became attached to someone else. She was a monogamous stalker. She first came to admire him when she sat in front of him at the latest corporate motivational rally. Far from inspiring, the sessions had the opposite effect on her. They were obliviously geared towards extraverts and made her most uncomfortable with the implication that characteristics at the core of her being were “challenges” that must be overcome with the help of their exclusive seven step plan. “I challenge you to be more than you are!”

Martin had sat behind her with his buddy Wesley. He made remarks under his breath, and Wesley chuckled without making a sound. His quips and impersonations of the speaker made the whole thing bearable. She wasn’t the only one. Alice, who sat next to her, also found him amusing, although she tried hard not to show it. She wanted to give him a smile, but the usual fears stopped her: the dread that he wouldn’t smile back, the worry that he would self-consciously stop the commentary, the anxiety that she might have a bit of breakfast in her teeth. So many fears.

It sounded silly now, to be afraid of such things. Once you were dead, social anxiety was unimportant to say the least. Ironic. So much fear, but she had never gotten around to being properly afraid of death. It’s often what you were not watching out for that gets you. Like the car that runs you down because you jumped out in the street to avoid the piano falling out of the window or choking to death on a bit of organic goat cheese which you were eating to avoid slowly destroying your body with unhealthy food.

She watched him. His aura seemed familiar to her as though she already knew it. She watched the steady pulse and swirl of the patterns and colors that were Martin. He seemed lonely and discontent. Was it insanity-induced delusion, or did her new senses afford her an interpretation of the auras, as though reading cosmic body language?

I should go visit him.
The thought gave her a thrill of fear and excitement. Then it occurred to her that she had not moved from the spot where she first became aware of her new condition.

Could she move around in this holographic Color Field painting? Maybe she was stuck in this spot. If she moved around, how would it work? Would she sprout ectoplasmic legs and walk? Would she float around all ghostly, or would she disappear from one place and reappear elsewhere in an instant?

She tried to picture herself right outside Martin’s cubicle. Nothing happened. She pictured legs, sprouted a couple of appendages, and moved them across the floor in a walking motion. This produced the sensation of an interaction but no movement. She focused on moving toward Martin, and she moved. It surprised her when she bumped into her cubicle wall. Wasn’t flowing through walls as if they weren’t there supposed to be a perk of being a ghost? That’s how it worked in the movies. She felt a strong resistance as she touched the wall. She experimented. With force (force of what, will?) she pushed her way into the wall, but it was painful. At least she interpreted the sensation as pain. She had no doubt it was bad for her.

She could follow the path her living self had followed, but what fun would that be? Instead she floated up to the space beneath the ceiling but above the cubicle wall and then began to move towards Martin. As she did, she experienced a rather curious sensation, as if being drained. Did she only imagine it? She didn’t think so. Slight at first but growing the further she went. She stopped, and the increase ceased. She hovered a moment to be sure. It didn’t stop or decrease as the fatigue of a physical exertion did. She didn’t recover by holding still. A steady discharge continued, as if it took an effort to hold still. If moving around used this much energy, then so much for carefree travel as part of her retirement lifestyle.

What happened if she used too much? Could the dead die? Then what? Wake up in Purgatory II where the dead go when they die?
There should be a manual, dammit, with “Don’t Panic” in large, friendly letters on the cover.
In a panic, she retreated to her cubicle. As she did so, the draining receded and then ceased. Something about her cubicle sustained her. Stuck for eternity in a six by six box. Perhaps this was Hell after all.

She monitored her sensations while she explored her immediate surroundings. She moved toward and away from different objects. The number of objects, each affecting the flow in differing amounts, made it a complicated procedure. After floating about a while, she concluded that she drew life support (death support?) from the items in the cubicle she touched the most. Her recently upgraded keyboard, mouse, and computer tower were good energy sources, as were the two sculptures on her bookcase. But the best was her chair. She supposed that was because she had the largest contact area for the most time with her chair.
Newsflash! Sitting on your rear could save your life, story at 11.
She sat on her chair. It felt much better sitting in it than it had when she was living. The stupid ergonomic chair did not accommodate people who were barely five feet tall. She sat and pondered.

Well, this was motivation to choose. When she thought about the twin songs, the Blazing Star of creative drive and Black Hole of recycled art supplies, the music swelled. Were these objects the only possible source of energy? Would they eventually be depleted? She reached out to touch the power flowing through the wires in the floor. It tasted (really? tasted?) nasty and was not energizing. As she contemplated the flow of energy, she noticed a trickle of another kind coming through the opening of her cubicle from the window beyond.

She cast her sense out in that direction, following the stream, and found that the sun was the source. The sun: a roiling, boiling ball, burning with the power of creation, fusing atoms together to form new atoms, devouring Hydrogen and creating Helium with the glorious byproduct of energy. She stared into the sun. There was another plus to being a ghost: gazing into the sun without being blinded. She saw the reaction and understood as no one had before. More than light and heat, more than modern physics comprehended, there was a living energy streaming out into the solar system. The fundamental stuff of creation poured forth, and in the background she heard the sun singing a pale reflection of Blazing Star’s song.

The energy of her objects sustained her in their proximity, but the energy of the sun was different. Though slight, it was energy to be collected and stored. She felt power flowing into her like that first cup of coffee in the morning. She sat and basked, until the stream decreased and then stopped. The sun had risen to a point, and no longer shined on her spot through the window. She still saw the sun through the walls, but the building absorbed or blocked the flow of living energy. Perhaps she should pop outside during the day. After a short study, she saw the flux was greater beyond the walls but not strong enough to overcome the drain of being that far from her stuff.