The Lonely Whelk (7 page)

“
Oh good grief,” Rock said.
“Not again.” He sighed and shook his head. “You can sit right here
and complete this paperwork. I’ll be back in a few moments — I just
need to deal with a small issue. Quin?”

The two men disappeared.

Clyde opened the envelope and removed the
piece of paper inside. It was blank. He frowned and flipped it
over. There was nothing on the back either. Holding the piece of
paper up to the light, spitting on it, and scribbling on it with an
invisible ink revealer all revealed nothing. So, Clyde glanced at
his watch, leaned back in his chair, and began to watch the
security screens.

The screens, unlike the paper, revealed a
very interesting scene. The winking man ran about from location to
location, while Rock ran after him just a bit behind. After a
while, Rock caught the man and began to bring him back towards the
building. Suddenly, the man wrenched himself from Rock’s grasp and
bolted off the property. Rock threw his hands up in the air and
came back towards the building.

Clyde reached out for the piece of paper and
carefully folded it. He pulled a knife from his pocket, cut a few
holes, and then unfolded it, revealing a snowflake. He then wrote
in neat letters, “I saw the whole thing,” folded it back up, and
slipped it into the envelope. Then Rock entered the room, breathing
heavily.

“
Well,” said Rock, “I
chased him off. But it turns out he was hiding keys to the building
all over the property.” He held up a small silver key which was
nearly engulfed by his large hand. “I don’t know how he got them or
how many he hid, but I need to go find them. Care to
help?”

“
Sure,” Clyde replied. He
counted along with the beating of his pulse and stood, leaving the
envelope on the table.

Rock led Clyde out into the gardens behind
the Globe. “I don’t think he hid any of the keys off the property.
Let’s split up – we’ll spend twenty minutes or so looking and find
as many as we can, then we’ll finish up the interview and I’ll
review the security tapes to find the rest.”

“
Great.” Clyde nodded
firmly. As soon as Rock’s back had turned, he let himself grin just
a little bit. This was fun.

As Rock ran towards the front of the
building, Clyde closed his eyes and imagined a grid. He hovered
over the garden, and pictured the screens as mapping to each square
of the imaginary grid, and began to run the screen footage like a
film on the back of his eyelids.

The man hadn’t hidden any of the keys in the
front. The first hiding place was: the small fountain.

As he moved towards the fountain, Clyde set
up a rhythm in his head… one, two and three, four and five… and
stepped carefully to the beat.
Maintaining a beat
, Ivanna
the Bard had said,
will allow the learner or the learned to stay
in tune to his knowledge and understanding by creating a pattern
upon which all other things may be learned and remembered
.

The fountain housed three keys: one in the
water, one under a loose stone, and one balanced on the statue in
the fountain’s centerpiece which was shaped like a water swallow
dive-bombing a squirrel. There were two keys by the statue of the
man with a hedgehog, one under each big toe. He found four keys
under bushes, three under seemingly random stones, and another six
in and around the fence that ran across the back of the property;
it wasn’t a very big garden, but it was beautifully landscaped.
Big, pink, cloud-like flowers floated amid a sea of dark green
leaves. A few little white flowers dotted the spaces in between. He
found it very appealing.

Stopping for a moment, Clyde looked around.
Rock was nowhere to be found. He must have still been looking in
the front.

Clyde closed his eyes again, and let himself
float over the grid map of the garden. He knew there was a pattern.
He could feel it blending with his own rhythm. If someone were
hiding more than one key, it must be because they knew that most of
them would be found. That meant that there would be a pattern – so
the keys could easily be found – and then a final key hidden
outside the pattern.

He began to play the security screen footage
again. T
he man ran to the fountain and the statue, to the three
bushes and random stones…
and then Clyde saw it: a figure
eight. That meant there were still a few hidden. He strolled over
to a large bush carefully pruned into the shape of a mercenary
holding a bag of gold and a large spear. Sure enough, he found a
key hidden in the bag of gold. The other three pruned bushes – a
large bottle of medicine labeled “Rx,” a rabbit with a top hat, and
a donut-shaped planet, probably a bush version of Sagitta – proved
to contain three more keys. That meant that there was probably only
one left.

He pressed his fingers to his temple. Had
the man gone anywhere that was not located within the figure eight?
The drinking fountain. Clyde strode over to the public drinking
fountain. He looked in it, around it, even underneath it. No key.
He frowned. It was a standard drinking fountain, shaped like a
sphere with a little button about the size of a cassette tape, that
when pushed, caused water to shoot out of the spigot. The sphere
was about one foot off the ground with the water pipe visible and
then disappearing into the ground.

I’m thirsty
, he thought, and pressed
the button. It didn’t move. He pressed it again. It still didn’t
move. He grinned a little and carefully removed the cover. There
was the key, shoved between the cover and the sensor. Brilliant. No
one would ever find that. Except him.

He slipped the last key into his pocket,
took a drink, and walked casually back to the building.

Rock was waiting in the office. He glanced
at his watch. “Perfect timing. I was just coming in for a
break!”

“
I found the keys.” Clyde
reached into his pocket and dropped the twenty keys on Rock’s
desk.

“
Impressive!” Rock’s
eyebrows rose considerably. “You have just done me a great favor.
How about we get this interview done with, shall we? Follow
me.”

The elevator stopped at the thirty-seventh
floor.

“
The next part of your
interview is with Quin. Do you remember him?”

“
Yes, sir!” Clyde
replied.

“
Good. I am going to meet
with a coworker and then I’ll catch up with you there. Just go to
the end of this hallway and take a right. It’s pretty
straightforward – you can’t get too lost. Tell Quin I will be right
there.”

“
Yes, sir.” Clyde nodded
once and strode confidently down the hall.

He turned the corner and froze.

In front of him lay a shaft. It must have
been hundreds of feet deep, straight down into the building. He
could see pipes and support beams, and even a few cobwebs. A cool
breeze hit his face. But there was something odd about the whole
scene.

Clyde pressed his fingers to his temples and
imagined the space around him, felt the breeze, counted his
heartbeats. Then he realized something: the part of the building he
was standing in was a sphere. A shaft would never just go down
forever. If it were real, he would be able to see grass and
possibly some nicely pruned bushes. It wouldn’t be dark, because
the sun was out. Not only that, but the breeze appeared to be
coming from straight ahead, not blowing up or down. So what should
he do? What was the problem with this hallway?

He took three deep breaths and squared his
shoulders. It was time to take a literal step of faith. He closed
his eyes and stepped forward. His foot – naturally – hit the floor.
He opened his eyes and looked down; it was an incredibly disturbing
sensation. The graphics of the image on the floor were such a high
quality resolution that it really looked as though he was gazing
into the depths of a massive shaft — he felt like a cartoon
character that was only hovering in the air for a moment before
inevitably crashing to his doom. He looked up. The shaft continued
into the sky… except that he couldn’t see the sky.

Shaking his head to ward off the dizzy
feeling he turned and strode down the hallway. He knocked on the
first door he came to. Kaia answered. She grinned.

“
You made it. Quin’s
waiting. Come in.”

Quin sat at a large wooden desk. In front of
it were two chairs. A bookcase leaned against one wall. Other than
the furniture and a few books, there was nothing in the office.

Quin frowned. Clyde stared into Quin’s eyes
and then sat in a chair facing him.

They sat in silence for twenty minutes, with
Kaia watching. She tapped a pencil, twisted her hands, and played
with her hair. She was clearly uncomfortable. Clyde only mirrored
Quin.

“
Your resume is weak,” Quin
said suddenly. He held out a piece of paper which had Clyde’s name
and contact information. Clyde glanced it over and
swallowed.

“
That’s... my old resume.”
He closed his eyes briefly and then met Quin’s gaze. “My apologies.
I must have printed out the wrong one before I left this
morning.”

“
I see,” Quin replied.
“Well, it just so happens that as long as your qualifications are
correct, it doesn’t matter. Good work on the keys and in the
hallway.”

“
Oh my goodness, it was
amazing!” The man that hid the keys popped out from behind Quin.
Quin didn’t flinch. “I’m John and you were absolutely incredible!
You found all the keys I hid – you even figured out the pattern!
Excellent work. And the hallway – those are Smith’s LEDs with a MST
45mcs processing computer running the simulation. Realistic, isn’t
it? And I loved your snowflake! Seven corners! That is nearly
impossible! High quality work, young man.”

The door opened and Rock walked in.

“
You passed the girl test,
the written test, the key test, and the hallway test!” John
continued without taking a breath. “So basically, if we don’t hire
you now it’s because we have somebody else or we’re being
discriminatory.”

“
If you would like the
position, then we will talk pay.” Rock reached out his
hand.

“
Thank you, sir!” Clyde
exclaimed, standing up and taking Rock’s hand. “I
accept.”

*******

Paperwork is of the devil
, Ivanna the
Bard had once said,
but without it society will fall
.

She had never been so right
, Clyde
thought, stretching. He sat in front of a large stack of paper in
the office of the esteemed Mr. Drake, the man who apparently both
ran this entire department and could crush Clyde with a twitch of
his finger. Luckily, much of it had included copies for him to take
home or were instructions for sections that didn’t apply to
him.

He was amazed that in a matter of a couple
of hours he had interviewed, been offered a job, accepted the job,
and filled out his paperwork. At this rate, he would be an expert
at working here by the end of the week.

“
Oh good, you’re
done.”

Clyde turned to see Rock standing in the
doorway. He stepped forward and picked up half of the large stack
of papers from the table.

“
Great. So what does your
availability look like?”

Opening his mouth, Clyde barely made out,
“Well, anytime really—” before Rock cut him off.

“
Can you start right now?
We’re a bit short-handed.”

“
I have no problem with
it,” Clyde responded, surprised. “I just need to make a phone
call.”

“
Sure,” Rock said. “I’ll be
back to get you in, say, fifteen minutes?”

Clyde nodded as he turned and strode from
the room.

As soon as the door swung shut, Clyde pulled
out his phone. He let a small smile cross his features as he
dialed.

“
Mom!” he said, as soon as
she answered. “I got the job!”

“
Well, congratulations,
sweetie!” she congratulated him. “That is excellent
news.”

“
They want me to start
today. That means I have to work late. I don’t know when I’ll be
home.”

“
That’s fine, sweetie,” she
replied. “I’ll just have Cindy leave dinner for you in the
oven.”

There was a brief moment of silence.

“
Are you still there,
Mom?”

“
I’m here, just can’t
believe my baby is growing up so fast.”

Was she crying on the other end?

“
I’m not...” Clyde sighed.
A parent will never give up on the innocence of their child, no
matter what the truth may actually be
. “Okay, Mom. Well, I have
to go now.”

“
Bye, sweetheart! Have a
great first day at work!”

Clyde hung up. He knew in his soul that his
mother would never recognize the fact that he had long ago grown
up, but he could always hope, couldn’t he?

Hope is like cotton candy to a starving
man
, Ivanna the Bard whispered in the back of his head. He
sighed quietly, and sat down to wait for Rock.

P
ART 2

The universe is a strange place. It is full
of holes and curtains, and little tourist shops that seem to appear
everywhere selling magnets, t-shirts, and chocolate rocks. When a
tourist shop moves (a very rare occurrence, mind you), all of its
merchandise experiences a spatial-temporal shift, which causes the
names on the items to morph into the name of the current location.
The first time Hazel’s shop moved, she opened and closed her mouth
several times, blinked rapidly, and pinched her arms
repeatedly.