4. He locked the office door and walked across the dark parking lot. He watched his coworker’s car pull out of its space and drive away.
He walked aimlessly in the direction of the bar. Every night before heading home, he wasted a few hours in the bar. If he wasn’t careful he found himself on autopilot, like a homing pigeon being called back to his routine. Well, why fight it? What else was he going to do? He didn’t feel like going home yet and so he entered the bar like always. It was dark in there with a haunted gothic ambience. There were some books on shelves but they were all layered with years of dust.
He took his seat on the stool at the bar and ordered a White Russian.
He sat at the bar and looked at the row of bottles behind the counter. The bartender took one and upended it over a glass and then replaced it. There was some kind of filter affixed to the mouth of the bottle so that when the bartender poured the liquid, it didn’t all rush out but was dispensed in a trickling dosage. The bartender filled up glass after glass and delivered the glasses to the patrons who had ordered them. He drank his White Russian, the ice cubes clicking against his teeth. He let one of the cubes pass over his tongue and sit in his mouth.
He lost track of how many White Russian he drank and knew it was time for him to go home. He paid his bill and left feeling only a little unsteady on his feet. When he moved his head, everything in his periphery swam up before him and then swayed back, not quite attached to reality. He kept his eyes straight ahead and walked the seven blocks to his apartment. By the time he got there he was already feeling better if not entirely sober.
He lived in a split-level walk-up in a formerly nicer neighborhood where you still had to pay people to come and take your trash away. His neighbor was watching television in the hall and drinking beer out of a can. He turned the light on in his apartment. It was square and spartan. There were no decorations or posters or pictures or knick-knacks. Nothing but the four walls and his neat furniture.
He was kind of hungry and wanted to settle his stomach, so he went into the kitchen and turned the water on, letting it run to rinse out the lead taste. He opened a cupboard and took out a pot and put the pot under the stream of running water. The water filled up the pot making a sound that lowered to a hollow rumbling. He turned on the burner of his stove and placed the pot on top of the burner. While waiting for the water to come to a boil he took off his shoes and placed them on the shoe rack. He took out his indoor shoes which were almost but not quite slippers and put them on. There was a large flat screen television mounted on the wall opposite the futon couch which pulled out into his bed. He sat on the couch and turned the television on. The sitcom Strangers was on. He changed the channel. There was a commercial for a new Megastore. He turned the channel to an infomercial in which an energetic man with a pony tail was demonstrating some kind of exercise equipment. He changed the channel again and that channel was broadcasting an inspirational message from a motivational speaker. He left the station there and stood up going over to his closet and taking out his pyjamas. He placed his dirty clothes in the hamper and felt the soft texture of his silk pyjamas against his skin.
He made a telephone call while stirring in the dry oatmeal into the boiling water on the stove. He could hear the voice of the inspirational speaker talking on the television in the other room. The voice was making platitudes about civic duty and the obligation of happiness.
He heard a voice on the telephone and said, "How well do you know Sector 8?"
The voice put him on hold and when it came back said, "Sector 8?"
The oatmeal was almost ready. He took out a ceramic bowl from the cupboard. He told the voice on the telephone that he had been doing some work at the office with regards to Sector 8. The voice told him that he knew Sector 8 was on the other side of the wall and that it had been condemned but that people were still squatting there.
He asked the voice if the squatters could be considered dangerous. The voice didn’t think so.
"Well, it may be nothing, but I just have this hunch. You know they don’t tell me anything, but whoever is employing me is interested in Sector 8."
"They probably just want to buy it out. Turn it into a Megastore."
"They just opened a new Megastore. But, yeah, maybe you’re right."
He hung up the telephone. Something about his new task at work worried him. It wasn’t as if he had a fierce loyalty to his employers. He wasn’t always entirely sure he knew who they were. But if there was some kind of threat to them then it was also a threat to him. He didn’t have very much to go on. The data certainly was circumstantial. He just felt something and it was unlike anything he’d felt before.
The inspirational speaker was still talking. The camera was zooming in on him. He was standing on a stage waving a small white book. The camera zoomed in on his face, his eyes blazing with a kind of religious fervor. It zoomed in closer on his mouth as the speaker spoke the words that floated in the apartment.
"This is just the beginning. Everything is promised to you," the speaker spoke, his teeth flashing. The camera zoomed in further and tighter on those smiling white teeth.
In the morning, he was asleep on his fold-out futon. The television had shut itself off sometime in the night. His alarm clock began to a make a noise which entered his subconscious, drawing him forward into the waking world. He had not been experiencing REM sleep when he was awakened and did not feel groggy or disoriented. He awoke straight away, turning back the sheet which covered him and rotated his legs out over the edge of the bed. He stood up and repositioned the sheets flat on the bed and pushed it in such a way that it folded itself back up into its couch position.
He looked at himself in the mirror while brushing his teeth. Or rather he watched the toothbrush in the mirror. He watched the toothbrush go in and out of his mouth. He opened the lips of his mouth around the toothbrush exposing his teeth which were coated in the foamy white mixture of his toothpaste and saliva. He spat this out into the sink and put his mouth under the water and spat.
He stood in front of his closet deciding what to wear for the day. He ate some of the leftover oatmeal for breakfast and was out the door by 9:00 a.m.
It felt a little warmer that day. Just a subtle difference, perhaps due to the lack of wind or less cloud coverage. He walked to the office and unlocked the door. It was dark inside and he turned on the lights and went over to his desk where his project awaited him. He had locked it up in the desk drawer which was something he never did. He never had any reason to and hadn’t been sure that it would lock.
The key for the drawer had been taped to the inside of the drawer itself which at first he had found odd but figured it made about as much sense as anywhere else. He had pulled at the tape which broke and left a crumbly residue on his hands. He put all of the material from the map project into the drawer and slid the drawer shut. He put the key into the lock and turned it. It hesitated and grinded a little as if it wasn’t going to turn all the way. But then it did and the drawer was locked.
He had brought some WD40 which he used to oil the lock and when he put the key in, it slid without hesitation and opened the drawer. He wiped the key off on a napkin and his hands were stained with dark grease.
He looked at the sheet of paper that entailed his instructions. He was to find certain coordinates on the map and write down street names. He was to cross index those street names with a list provided. He was to plot certain points on the map and discern any possible pattern. He was to make concentric circles with regards to coordinates given and segregate streets into their respective quadrants. Most of the points plotted were in Sector 8 and there was a large congregation of targets within the first concentric circle. He discovered that the center of the concentric circles did not align with the center of a circle dictated by the plot points.
He was writing something in his notes when his coworker came in. He barely looked up as the brass bell clanged. She took off her jacket and walked over to the filing cabinet, opened a drawer and closed it. He thought that maybe he could feel her looking at him but he did not look at her to find out. She sat behind her desk and got to work. Yes, work was the thing. Maybe if he performed well enough with this task they would transfer him out of this tiny office and into something more suitable to his talents and ambition.
He had seen the work his coworker was doing. It was certainly busy work. She was never going to get out of this office.
The painter came in and he ignored him.
They kept at their respective jobs until the telephone rang. They had two telephones but only one telephone number so that when there was a call it rang on both of their desks. He usually let the coworker take it. She seemed to enjoy the trivial task of lifting the receiver off the hook. But before he even thought about what he was doing, his hand had moved and he was saying hello into the mouthpiece. Something had compelled him to answer the telephone, some unseen, unknown force. Like it was an act already accomplished. He looked over at the coworker. It was a call in reference to the hole in the wall. They told him to prioritize it and go out there and take accurate measurements and report back. He hung up the telephone and looked at the clock. It was almost one.
He gathered the items of his task together and locked them in the drawer. He saw the coworker watch him and slid the key in his pocket. In one of the drawers of the filing cabinets were a caliper and a tape measurer. He opened a few drawers which contained a protractor, a sextant, a mask, a fan, and a telescope before finding what he was looking for. He picked up his notebook from the desk and looked at the coworker before exiting the office. She was transcribing a long list of numbers.
He almost headed in the wrong direction but then caught sight of the wall in the distance. He approached the wall with a sense of purpose. Here was another task in which he could prove himself. The painter wasn’t there but that was not entirely surprising as he had always considered the painter to be something of a slacker.
He took the caliper out and began to take measurements of the hole. It was fairly large, 21.67" x 37.59" at its widest and highest, respectively. He wrote all of the figures he measured into his notebook.
He returned to the office and the coworker was absent from her desk. Bunch of shirkers. What his employers needed to do was purge the chaff. No wonder the town was in a recession.
He sat at his desk and picked up the telephone dialing the number he had been given earlier. There was no answer and he left a message. He disliked leaving messages because he did not trust them. He preferred speaking directly to the person to whom he was responsible. But it was so hard to get a hold of anyone.
He unlocked the drawer looking over at the coworker’s empty desk. He took out the map and the papers and his notes. He tried to remember where he had left off. He looked at the map and his notes and it seemed to make less sense than before he left to measure the hole. It seemed meaningless and busy work like his coworker’s list of numbers. The idea didn’t depress him but was almost reassuring. There was something in the thought that snagged on some part of his brain but he ignored it. He was sure that he was being employed to his employer’s benefit and it was not his job to either question or decipher their motives. He was only required to do his job. And so he got back to it.
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He walked aimlessly in the direction of the bar. Every night before heading home, he wasted a few hours in the bar. If he wasn’t careful he found himself on autopilot, like a homing pigeon being called back to his routine. Well, why fight it? What else was he going to do? He didn’t feel like going home yet and so he entered the bar like always. It was dark in there with a haunted gothic ambience. There were some books on shelves but they were all layered with years of dust.
He took his seat on the stool at the bar and ordered a White Russian.
He sat at the bar and looked at the row of bottles behind the counter. The bartender took one and upended it over a glass and then replaced it. There was some kind of filter affixed to the mouth of the bottle so that when the bartender poured the liquid, it didn’t all rush out but was dispensed in a trickling dosage. The bartender filled up glass after glass and delivered the glasses to the patrons who had ordered them. He drank his White Russian, the ice cubes clicking against his teeth. He let one of the cubes pass over his tongue and sit in his mouth.
He lost track of how many White Russian he drank and knew it was time for him to go home. He paid his bill and left feeling only a little unsteady on his feet. When he moved his head, everything in his periphery swam up before him and then swayed back, not quite attached to reality. He kept his eyes straight ahead and walked the seven blocks to his apartment. By the time he got there he was already feeling better if not entirely sober.
He lived in a split-level walk-up in a formerly nicer neighborhood where you still had to pay people to come and take your trash away. His neighbor was watching television in the hall and drinking beer out of a can. He turned the light on in his apartment. It was square and spartan. There were no decorations or posters or pictures or knick-knacks. Nothing but the four walls and his neat furniture.
He was kind of hungry and wanted to settle his stomach, so he went into the kitchen and turned the water on, letting it run to rinse out the lead taste. He opened a cupboard and took out a pot and put the pot under the stream of running water. The water filled up the pot making a sound that lowered to a hollow rumbling. He turned on the burner of his stove and placed the pot on top of the burner. While waiting for the water to come to a boil he took off his shoes and placed them on the shoe rack. He took out his indoor shoes which were almost but not quite slippers and put them on. There was a large flat screen television mounted on the wall opposite the futon couch which pulled out into his bed. He sat on the couch and turned the television on. The sitcom Strangers was on. He changed the channel. There was a commercial for a new Megastore. He turned the channel to an infomercial in which an energetic man with a pony tail was demonstrating some kind of exercise equipment. He changed the channel again and that channel was broadcasting an inspirational message from a motivational speaker. He left the station there and stood up going over to his closet and taking out his pyjamas. He placed his dirty clothes in the hamper and felt the soft texture of his silk pyjamas against his skin.
He made a telephone call while stirring in the dry oatmeal into the boiling water on the stove. He could hear the voice of the inspirational speaker talking on the television in the other room. The voice was making platitudes about civic duty and the obligation of happiness.
He heard a voice on the telephone and said, "How well do you know Sector 8?"
The voice put him on hold and when it came back said, "Sector 8?"
The oatmeal was almost ready. He took out a ceramic bowl from the cupboard. He told the voice on the telephone that he had been doing some work at the office with regards to Sector 8. The voice told him that he knew Sector 8 was on the other side of the wall and that it had been condemned but that people were still squatting there.
He asked the voice if the squatters could be considered dangerous. The voice didn’t think so.
"Well, it may be nothing, but I just have this hunch. You know they don’t tell me anything, but whoever is employing me is interested in Sector 8."
"They probably just want to buy it out. Turn it into a Megastore."
"They just opened a new Megastore. But, yeah, maybe you’re right."
He hung up the telephone. Something about his new task at work worried him. It wasn’t as if he had a fierce loyalty to his employers. He wasn’t always entirely sure he knew who they were. But if there was some kind of threat to them then it was also a threat to him. He didn’t have very much to go on. The data certainly was circumstantial. He just felt something and it was unlike anything he’d felt before.
The inspirational speaker was still talking. The camera was zooming in on him. He was standing on a stage waving a small white book. The camera zoomed in on his face, his eyes blazing with a kind of religious fervor. It zoomed in closer on his mouth as the speaker spoke the words that floated in the apartment.
"This is just the beginning. Everything is promised to you," the speaker spoke, his teeth flashing. The camera zoomed in further and tighter on those smiling white teeth.
In the morning, he was asleep on his fold-out futon. The television had shut itself off sometime in the night. His alarm clock began to a make a noise which entered his subconscious, drawing him forward into the waking world. He had not been experiencing REM sleep when he was awakened and did not feel groggy or disoriented. He awoke straight away, turning back the sheet which covered him and rotated his legs out over the edge of the bed. He stood up and repositioned the sheets flat on the bed and pushed it in such a way that it folded itself back up into its couch position.
He looked at himself in the mirror while brushing his teeth. Or rather he watched the toothbrush in the mirror. He watched the toothbrush go in and out of his mouth. He opened the lips of his mouth around the toothbrush exposing his teeth which were coated in the foamy white mixture of his toothpaste and saliva. He spat this out into the sink and put his mouth under the water and spat.
He stood in front of his closet deciding what to wear for the day. He ate some of the leftover oatmeal for breakfast and was out the door by 9:00 a.m.
It felt a little warmer that day. Just a subtle difference, perhaps due to the lack of wind or less cloud coverage. He walked to the office and unlocked the door. It was dark inside and he turned on the lights and went over to his desk where his project awaited him. He had locked it up in the desk drawer which was something he never did. He never had any reason to and hadn’t been sure that it would lock.
The key for the drawer had been taped to the inside of the drawer itself which at first he had found odd but figured it made about as much sense as anywhere else. He had pulled at the tape which broke and left a crumbly residue on his hands. He put all of the material from the map project into the drawer and slid the drawer shut. He put the key into the lock and turned it. It hesitated and grinded a little as if it wasn’t going to turn all the way. But then it did and the drawer was locked.
He had brought some WD40 which he used to oil the lock and when he put the key in, it slid without hesitation and opened the drawer. He wiped the key off on a napkin and his hands were stained with dark grease.
He looked at the sheet of paper that entailed his instructions. He was to find certain coordinates on the map and write down street names. He was to cross index those street names with a list provided. He was to plot certain points on the map and discern any possible pattern. He was to make concentric circles with regards to coordinates given and segregate streets into their respective quadrants. Most of the points plotted were in Sector 8 and there was a large congregation of targets within the first concentric circle. He discovered that the center of the concentric circles did not align with the center of a circle dictated by the plot points.
He was writing something in his notes when his coworker came in. He barely looked up as the brass bell clanged. She took off her jacket and walked over to the filing cabinet, opened a drawer and closed it. He thought that maybe he could feel her looking at him but he did not look at her to find out. She sat behind her desk and got to work. Yes, work was the thing. Maybe if he performed well enough with this task they would transfer him out of this tiny office and into something more suitable to his talents and ambition.
He had seen the work his coworker was doing. It was certainly busy work. She was never going to get out of this office.
The painter came in and he ignored him.
They kept at their respective jobs until the telephone rang. They had two telephones but only one telephone number so that when there was a call it rang on both of their desks. He usually let the coworker take it. She seemed to enjoy the trivial task of lifting the receiver off the hook. But before he even thought about what he was doing, his hand had moved and he was saying hello into the mouthpiece. Something had compelled him to answer the telephone, some unseen, unknown force. Like it was an act already accomplished. He looked over at the coworker. It was a call in reference to the hole in the wall. They told him to prioritize it and go out there and take accurate measurements and report back. He hung up the telephone and looked at the clock. It was almost one.
He gathered the items of his task together and locked them in the drawer. He saw the coworker watch him and slid the key in his pocket. In one of the drawers of the filing cabinets were a caliper and a tape measurer. He opened a few drawers which contained a protractor, a sextant, a mask, a fan, and a telescope before finding what he was looking for. He picked up his notebook from the desk and looked at the coworker before exiting the office. She was transcribing a long list of numbers.
He almost headed in the wrong direction but then caught sight of the wall in the distance. He approached the wall with a sense of purpose. Here was another task in which he could prove himself. The painter wasn’t there but that was not entirely surprising as he had always considered the painter to be something of a slacker.
He took the caliper out and began to take measurements of the hole. It was fairly large, 21.67" x 37.59" at its widest and highest, respectively. He wrote all of the figures he measured into his notebook.
He returned to the office and the coworker was absent from her desk. Bunch of shirkers. What his employers needed to do was purge the chaff. No wonder the town was in a recession.
He sat at his desk and picked up the telephone dialing the number he had been given earlier. There was no answer and he left a message. He disliked leaving messages because he did not trust them. He preferred speaking directly to the person to whom he was responsible. But it was so hard to get a hold of anyone.
He unlocked the drawer looking over at the coworker’s empty desk. He took out the map and the papers and his notes. He tried to remember where he had left off. He looked at the map and his notes and it seemed to make less sense than before he left to measure the hole. It seemed meaningless and busy work like his coworker’s list of numbers. The idea didn’t depress him but was almost reassuring. There was something in the thought that snagged on some part of his brain but he ignored it. He was sure that he was being employed to his employer’s benefit and it was not his job to either question or decipher their motives. He was only required to do his job. And so he got back to it.
next