Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Don’t Let the Door Hit You
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
“How was your first day?” says the woman standing in front of him. She’s 50 or so. Middle management. Uncomfortable and avoiding his gaze. He can’t remember her name. Peggy? Pinky? Something with a P.
“Just like every other day,” he says. He shrugs.
She smiles a bit too widely, as if trying to mask her disdain for him – the lowly mailroom clerk – but doing a shitty job. That’s fine, he thinks. She’ll be here herself one day. You can only stay comfortably in the middle for so long. Falling is easiest.
Patty? he thinks. Maybe Polly?
He can’t really remember anyone’s name anymore, even the ones he’s worked with for decades. The long descent from chief executive to mailroom clerk is all he’s got left. The blurry remnants of an enthusiastic start, a somewhat satisfying career, an occasional breakdown. Something in the back of his mind nags at him, tells him things aren’t supposed to be this way. Something’s backward.
But what’s the point of questioning when you’re on your way out?
“Just leaving,” he says. “Getting ready to go.”
“Well,” she says. “This is goodbye, then.”
She waits, as if for a cue that she’s allowed to go. As if she has to ask his permission.
“So long, Pankaja,” he says. Her smile drops away. For a moment it seems as if she may start crying, but then she spins and rushes out the door. Maybe, he thinks, he wasn’t supposed to remember anything after all.
“First day,” he mutters, the words lonely and barely audible. “Or is it the last?” He can’t remember.
The former president cleans off his desk, empties the trash, turns off the mail room lights, and exits.
Everything fades quickly from memory.
An Exchange in the Wasteland
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
The camel-car sway-legged across an industrial wreckscape. A rider occupied the middle of its three cockpit domes. The other two were packed to the glass with spinmenders, implosive engines, and tangle-nets of aerophonic wire.
Beside a leaning but not yet fallen smokestack, it locked both upper and lower knees in all six legs. A rope ladder let the rider down from the car’s belly.
A man in a ragged pigeon-feather poncho came up out of the rubble to watch.
“Morning,” he said.
She looked at him over the top of her rebreather, then shot a grappling line to the top of the smokestack.
“Careful now,” said the man. “Might bring it all down.”
She pushed her voice through the mask, “It should hold.” She didn’t mention the stressline analysis she–or rather the car–had done.
The man settled with a ruffling of feathers. “Certain about that?”
She began to climb or, rather, the rope began to pull her up.
“I’ve got water,” said the ragged man.
“Oh,” said the rider, halfway up. He must have seen the condensation scoop spirals on the sides of the car.
He wasn’t offering because he thought she needed it.
She busied herself prying open the corroded lump that had once been a cleaning door in the stack’s side.
He might not be offering at all.
“Care for some?”
The car had taught her to recognize the question as a test: to refuse would insult by implying her water was better. To accept insulted by the implied comparison–he offered what was large portion of his reserves, but only a small fraction of her own. The car hadn’t taught her how to answer.
“You’re generous to offer,” she said.
“I’m sure no more generous than you,” said the man.
This did not track at all to what the car had coached her to expect. She was sure it must mean something.
“You’re prospecting carbon,” said the man. “You’ll find more and better over there,” he pointed to a hill of tumbled brick. “That was a warehouse, full of wooden things that burned before the walls fell in.”
“You are generous,” she said. She put the retrieval beacon back in her pocket.
“I am not the only one,” said the man, pursing parched lips.
She nodded.
She’d plant the beacon on the brick-mound as soon as she’d given him all the water he wanted.