Synergeist: The Haunted Cubicle (8 page)

Martin started to pick up the pile to move it off his chair, when a strange thought stopped him short.
You can’t sit in your chair if something else is in it.
Last night there had been a box in Millie’s chair. His pulse quickened. “No way…” he whispered to himself. He loved fanciful stories about ghosts and other supernatural things, but he didn’t believe they were real. “But what could ‘Can’t see,’ mean?” he thought to himself. He left the pile on his chair and headed for Millie’s cubicle.

As he approached her office with the lights on, he noticed what he had not the previous night. A large dry erase board that stood on end blocked the window that could be seen from Millie’s desk. He knew this was likely an elaborate practical joke, but he couldn’t shake the notion that this was not a prank—that Millie had sent him the messages.

He wouldn’t wait until later. Better sense might reassert itself if he didn’t act now. He glanced around and saw that no one was looking. He ducked into her cubicle and lifted the box from her seat then slid it up under the desk behind the trashcan. As he left, he moved the dry erase board from in front of the window. Again he sensed a warm breeze scented with an ancient spice and the end of a perpetual frustration.

Martin half expected the perpetrator of the great hoax to pop up and have a good laugh at his expense, but nothing happened. The air conditioner hummed. He heard someone repeatedly banging on a keyboard. Each stroke increased in tempo and volume, as if hitting a key harder would add emphasis or intimidate it into doing something it didn’t do with a gentle tap. He started when a cell phone rang in the next row. Not literally a ring, but a ringtone that must have been chosen to be as obnoxious as possible. The tone cut off before it had much of a chance to achieve its desired effect. In a voice full of seething fury, a woman began chewing someone out for not calling her sooner. Martin headed back toward his cubicle trying to look as casual as possible.

Tense expectation gave way to a hollow feeling as the day went on. He wasn’t sure exactly what he expected would happen, but something. It seemed that the messages had been left during the night. Maybe there would be another tomorrow. Was that because the joker worked in the cover of darkness, or because spooks only roam the earth in the witching hour?

He had acted on a feeling when he got the third message. Up until that moment he had been, at least consciously, convinced it was an elaborate practical joke.
What if it wasn’t
? A part of him must have believed that it was a possibility. The thought was exciting, terrifying, and ridiculous. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t believe in ghosts and such, but more that he would need more evidence to be convinced. A few blurry pictures and accounts of people’s feelings were not convincing.

That brought back the memory of the fleeting feeling he experienced after he moved the board from the window. Had he imagined it? It seemed so real, as if an old friend had wafted by and smiled at him, or a lover had caressed the back of his neck.

He realized he had been sitting there staring at his monitor for quite a while. He needed to stretch his legs and clear his head. He locked his computer and headed for the restroom. He went out through the fire doors into the main hallway and turned away from the security booth toward the bathrooms. As he did so, the double doors to the large meeting room across from the restrooms opened. A solid stream of men in suits funneled straight across the hall and into the one men’s bathroom on the floor. Obviously another meeting had dragged on too long. Martin believed that a meeting that went on too long had caused both the Triassic Extinctions. First the carnivores ate the herbivores and then, eventually, they gave up and ate each other.

When the building was constructed, mainframes occupied most of the floor with their giant refrigerator-sized disk drives and huge reel-to-reel backup systems. At that time very few humans occupied the floor, so the bathroom was a small one. The line would be a long one.

Martin was in no mood for a crowd or waiting, so he went back to the stairs and up to the top floor to his Sanctum of Solo Reflection. The floor once contained the offices of corporate executives, but they had moved years ago. Nothing had been done to the space since their evacuation. He supposed the plan was to reconfigure it someday when needed, but given the continuous downsizing over the years, that day had never come.

The faded décor was muted teal and pink, 80s stuffy corporate blah with copious wood paneling for that perfect touch of pretentious snob. Wires came up out of holes in the floors like exposed roots where receptionists, clerks, and personal assistants desks once were. Random pieces of ancient office equipment were scattered here and there as if they left in too big a hurry to take it all. A sofa, coffee table, and overstuffed chairs were also left in the area outside the elevator; like a prep’s living room snatched out of the 80s and dropped there.

The floor’s corners contained the walled-off offices of executives, each with a massive wooden door, still locked, forever denying the riffraff the opportunity to share their privileged vistas. The executive washroom was locked as well. Martin wondered what might be in there. Golden thrones maybe? However, there was a pair of standard restrooms in what must have been the clerical support area. These were open and functional. Martin headed for the men’s.

He liked to come up here. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe so he could have the bathroom all to himself. Perhaps the grim desolation of it fit his darker moods, or because it felt like rummaging the ruins of a post-apocalyptic building, a real life
Fallout 3
location.

While washing his hands, a text from Wesley hit his phone. The message read, “Where u at?”

Martin sent, “Duty calls”

To which Wesley replied, “THURSDAY!!! :> C u there”

He had forgotten. Their current Thursday tradition was the Greek place. They had delicious grilled fish sandwiches on Thursday.

☼

During lunch, Martin told Wesley about the message on the stack of paper but not about his second trip to Millie’s office. It puzzled Wesley that the prank’s perpetrators still hadn’t shown up to cash in on a laugh. Martin didn’t tell him everything. He did not share that he was beginning to believe it was not a practical joke.

Back at his desk a massive string of emails awaited his attention. One of the messages came from Human Resources encouraging everyone to be on the lookout on Friday for an important notice. Messages from HR were either useless fluff, announcements of yet another minor degradation of benefits, or even worse. The fact that the email came on Friday made it twice as likely to be bad. Major benefit pullbacks came on Friday. Layoffs always happened on Friday. It gave people the weekend to cool off. He checked the distribution. He had received it as a blind copy, so he had no idea who the notice went to, but it wasn’t only him. He heard a buzz building around the coffee pot.

The buzz and the memory of what he had felt after moving the box and the board kept him from being productive, but finally the day ended. He went home wondering, in more ways than one, what tomorrow might bring.

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.

—
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

When she had written, “Love, Millie,” she meant it in a deeply romantic way. She had never been certain she felt love. Not romantic love. Now she was. That surprised her, perhaps because she lacked the physical symptoms. Perhaps she had been too occupied with her problems. But it was clear to her now.

Millie did not believe in love at first sight, infatuation maybe, but not love. This may have been sudden, but her first sight of Martin’s soul was so much more than the lusty rush you got admiring the way someone’s butt looked in a pair of tight jeans. She no longer had hormones messing with her.

She had a disturbing notion.
What if contact with any soul would leave her feeling this way.
She would have to touch another soul to find out. Little remained in her energy hoard, but she could venture out long enough to do that. She would pick someone she did not recognize, so she would not be influenced by a previous impression, but not until after Martin got her note.

The printer/copier reeled off copy after copy, filling the hopper and stopping. An unfamiliar aura stopped in front of the machine, planted hands on hips, and billowed disapproval. Millie considered touching this soul since she didn’t know her and was already watching her but decided against it. As unpleasant as her aura was from a distance, she didn’t want to get up close. The idea of being infatuated with this person gave her the screaming meemies. The woman who possessed this disgruntled aura lifted the stack of copies and placed them in Martin’s chair. Then she pulled a sticky note from the pad on Martin’s desk, slapped it on top of the pile and scrawled a note on it. The reproachful woman went back to the copier and filled the empty paper trays. As she finished, Martin came down the aisle and entered his cube.

Millie crossed the fingers she no longer had and observed his aura. Watching him from a distance was like gazing at the surface of the ocean from an airplane. It was so much less satisfying than the view of all the ocean’s depths she had gotten when she touched his soul. To make contact again was so tempting. She resisted. He studied the printouts, started to move the box, and then came out of his office and took the aisle towards hers.
He’s coming here!

He came straight to her cubicle, lifted the box from the chair and slid it back under the desk behind the trashcan. Then he moved the board from the window, and she felt the sweet sunshine again. Millie wanted to hug him. She did what she could. She went to him, touched his soul and thought warm, loving, thankful thoughts. Then she retreated to the sweet spot of her chair.

She basked in the sun’s living energy and kept an eye on Martin, but he didn’t do anything interesting. Her success with the copier was heady. She thought she could do more with it. She saw people scanning and faxing as well as copying and retrieving printed computer files. By carefully observing circuits beneath the buttons, she learned to duplicate more of the machine’s functions. Something was different about the machine. She smelled it from across the building. A Millie-field now radiated from it.

So it was not necessary to bodily touch something to impart the field. She touched her now lifeless keyboard. After a couple of minutes she checked, but there was still no field on it. Something other than her presence was required. Perhaps it was the expenditure of energy. She passed through her mouse, expending a dash of energy to do so, but again, there was no resulting field. So what was different about creating the message on the machine?

Creating. That was the difference. Using the bits of trash and a touch of energy to create something new. It fit. It meshed with the grand choice she was avoiding, becoming part of the raw materials of creation in the Black Hole or a part of the creative fire of the Blazing Star.

She beamed herself over to the machine to test it out. The field was strong enough to sustain her without burning any energy, not as pleasant as her chair but adequate. This changed everything. As long as she had the energy, she could create things, and there would be safe havens for her as a result.

She returned to her cubicle. The sun’s energizing rays did not shine on the machine. Giddy with her success, she considered her next move. Martin of the magnificent, melancholy aura had gotten her message and cleared the obstacles. A thank you note was in order. Thinking of Martin brought back the memory of his soul, of the deep connection, and of the love she felt for him. But was it love or a side effect of touching his aura? She needed to know.

Someone was at the machine she did not recognize. A woman. She didn’t know if gender preference still applied in the afterlife, but she decided to eliminate the variable and find an unfamiliar male aura. She found one at the coffee station next to Martin’s cube. A little afraid of what she might discover, she flashed over and touched his soul in the way she had touched Martin’s.

There was the exhilarating flood of information, the flamboyant streams of past choices, present conditions, and future probabilities, but she didn’t find them beautiful. Nor were they ugly. Steady, reliable but boring. Mostly flat with a hint of sweet and sour, ambition and ennui. He loved his dog though. She went back to her chair.