Synergeist: The Haunted Cubicle (9 page)

She did not feel the same about this guy as Martin. The perfect living memory of the man’s soul was there, but she wished it wasn’t. She felt dirty. Touching a soul did not cause immediate love or infatuation for that matter, at least not this time. But Martin had been the first. Was it a first kiss thing? Maybe it worked that way because she wanted it to, something like confirmation bias. She didn’t know. In spite of the lack of hormones, she was as full of doubts about it as ever. She decided to thank Martin warmly but go easy on the professions of love. No matter how real it was to her, she didn’t want to freak him out. “Dude, the dead girl is in love with me. How creepy is that?”

☼

Millie passed the time soaking up the sun until it moved on. Then she watched people use the copier to see if she could learn any new tricks. During the day someone got annoyed when the machine stopped before it had finished his task. With a great deal of impatient jerking and slamming, he changed the toner cartridge. He petulantly left the spent one on top of the machine rather than drop it in the trash can about a foot away, a symbolic, “See? See what I have to put up with?”
Toner dust within inches of the glass!
The prospect of using it to create her next message excited her. She watched with anticipation to see if anyone cleaned up after the irritable user. No one did.

As she waited for everyone to leave, she considered what she might say in her message. Once again, words seemed inadequate. She considered creating an image. The thought of moving each speck to render the picture daunted her. Perhaps she didn’t need to do it that way. She had made the mistake before of thinking in terms of the way things worked in the physical word. She had drawn with one hand at a time. There were artists who drew with both hands. She no longer had hands, so why be limited to doing one thing at a time? What if she held the whole image in her mind and willed it all to happen at once? Why not?

Once she fixed the composition in her mind, she waited. When at last she saw Martin coming down the aisle, she could sense he was anticipating something. Was he expecting another message? She flashed over to the copier. As he covered the last few steps, she held the image she had composed in her mind. Then she willed the toner dust on the cartridge and the top of the copier to become the image on the glass. It worked. Composed on the copy glass was a grayscale image of her favorite Facebook profile picture with “XXOO, Millie,” in her handwriting below it. She produced the energy pattern in the circuits that mimicked the start button just before Martin reached the machine. A sheet emerged and dropped into the output tray. He stopped and lifted the page. She wanted to touch him, to experience his reaction, but she ran to her cubicle instead.

Now about those ghosts. I'm sure they're here and I'm not half so alarmed at meeting up with any of them as I am at having to meet the live nuts I have to see every day.

—
Bess Truman

Martin woke up before the alarm, which was unusual for him. He rushed to work with anticipation, feeling foolish and excited at the same time. As he neared his cubicle the printer started up and spit out a single sheet of paper. Intuition told him to look at it. His cynical side rolled its eyes and sighed heavily. He ignored it. He lifted the page from the output tray. It bore the artistically rendered image of the same girl as the photo he took from the box. She was holding a camera at arm’s length, pointing it at herself, and grinning a broad, cheesy smile. Below the image was the message, “XXOO, Millie.” He lifted the lid of the copier. The picture and the message had been drawn on the glass in toner dust. He had no doubt who created it.

He felt a rush of excitement, fear, and embarrassment. He looked to see if the pranksters were lurking. A bleary looking java junkie, clutching a coffee cup, headed down the aisle towards him, but he only had eyes for the liquid gold. It amazed him how the certainty of his discovery coexisted with the fear that he was the butt of an ever more elaborate joke. He made another 10 copies of the image. They weren’t as good as the first because lifting the lid had disturbed the image. Then he cleaned off the glass. He took the prints to the World’s Worst Cubicle.

He sat studying the image. If he had not seen the delicately arranged toner dust himself, he would have guessed it was a digital creation, a Photoshop manipulation of a photograph, and a very artfully done one. He found himself wondering if he could get the image onto something that lasted longer than cheap copy paper and toner. After studying the image, he became more convinced that this was not a prank. He felt something more, something deeper than should be evoked by a black and white selfie of someone he never met.

He placed the original copy into the leather briefcase he kept in his bottom desk drawer. It was for those rare occasions when he needed to take home hard copies of stuff otherwise only available from inside the corporate firewall to read. He wanted to tack one up on his cubicle wall, but he wasn’t sure what he’d say if anyone asked about it. He slipped the rest of the copies into his top desk drawer, under the pile of Dilbert cartoons and other humorous things he had collected over the years.

Putting the image out of sight didn’t help much. Thoughts stormed through his brain as he started up his computer. What now? Wait for another message? He wanted to reply, but he couldn’t think how. He wanted to tell someone, everyone. They would think he was crazy. For the moment, he kept it to himself.

He tried to get work done, but the image and the girl in the image kept interrupting his concentration. Millie, the girl he did not know, sending him messages from…
From where?
He thought about taking the rest of the day off since he wasn’t getting any work done. Yesterday’s message that there would be a big announcement today kept him from it. He wanted to do research, but the corporate Internet Nazis might not consider research on ghosts to be work related. He could use his phone, but he hated reading very much on the small screen. And unlike some people, he felt that if he was
at
work, he should at least make an effort
to
work. He found a bit of troublesome code that needed attention and buried himself in it until Wesley came and broke the trance.

“
Martin, check this out.”

“
What?”

“
Stand up.”

Martin stood up and looked around but didn’t see anything worth noting. “What?”

“
Just watch,” said Wesley. He crouched until his head was beneath the top of the cubicle and crept around the corner to the coffee zone. Then, in a loud, Brooklyn accent he said, “Hey, who brought all these freakin’ doughnuts?”

Heads began to pop up from all across the sea of beige boxes like the whack-a-mole arcade game, and then the migration began. Martin ducked and snorted. Wesley poked his head around the file cabinet and said, “Let’s hit it.”

Martin didn’t want to be there when the hoard realized they had been duped. He hastily followed Wesley as he led them down a side aisle on a roundabout path to the exit to avoid the main corridor.

☼

Avoiding crowds in the local restaurants on Friday was nearly impossible. Wesley and Martin’s ongoing quest was to find the best place for lunch that nobody went to or a creative alternative. Their search had led them to truly dreadful places: a deli in the back of a furniture store which didn’t last very long, gas station hot dogs, and the roach coach at a construction site. It was fun but not very good for the digestion. Today’s lunch was probably the best yet. Wesley’s aunt had made him a big pot of soup, and he brought enough to share. They sat in the break room after warming the heavenly concoction in the microwave and ate.

Wesley crumbled saltines into his bowl. “What you got planned for the weekend?”

Martin mumbled, “Nothing,” into his soup. He didn’t have any plans for the weekend. He almost never did. He had friends that played cards and sometimes they had a game, but as they got married and kids came, this occurred less and less. He understood that he should find an activity or hobby that spurred social interaction, but he never found anything that appealed to him. His sister in Florida thought he should get himself checked out for depression. He would never admit it to her, but he had done some research and concluded that he wasn’t depressed, but in a holding pattern, waiting for something. For what, he didn’t know.

Wesley gave Martin a disapproving look, “Man, you need to get yourself a girlfriend. I could probably hook you up with someone.”

Martin sighed, “I’m not interested in a hook up.”

“
Well you got to start somewhere. Get back on the horse, as it were.” Then Wesley’s eyes grew wide. “Hey. You’re not gay are you? Because it would be alright with me if you were.”

Martin dropped his spoon, glared at Wesley and said, “No.”

Wesley laughed his big, open laugh, “Just messing with you man. But seriously, you might feel better if… Well, you know.”

☼

On the way back from lunch, Martin swung by Alice’s cubicle. He wanted to ask her more about Millie and why she thought she “fancied” him. She wasn’t there. He stood there a moment. Just as well, he thought. He was not clear what he’d say if she asked why he wanted to know. When he turned go, Alice was standing there, not just looking at him, but studying him. He wiped his face with his hand, thinking he must have left a glob of soup on his chin.

“
Has something happened, Martin?”

“
Uh, what do you mean?”

“
Well if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay,” said Alice as she concluded her study. “What can I do for you?”

Martin hesitated. Now that he was there, it felt foolish to ask for more information about a dead girl.

Alice smiled slightly. “What did you find Martin? In her things.”

Martin’s jaw dropped as though starting to speak, but then it hung there.

“
Martin dear, are we going to have a conversation here, or am I delivering a monologue?”

Martin rallied and asked, “I was wondering if you could tell me any more about her. About Millie.” As he said it, a dread built that she would just laugh at him.

She didn’t. “You want to know why I think she fancied you. Dear Millie was not one to talk about such things incessantly, as some do. I could just tell, just as I can tell something has disturbed you. Did you get your email from HR?”

“
No. Not yet. Did you?”

“
No, Martin. Our group didn’t get a notice yesterday.”

“
Oh,” said Martin. “Well, I better get back to work.”

Alice smiled and said, “Good luck.”

Martin muttered, “Thanks,” as he left. “I’ll need it.”

Alice always seemed to know things. He suspected her of having a mole in the executive offices. Alice Whitmore, super spy. It was one of the reasons Martin and everyone else knew Alice.

Martin went back to his beige box of banality and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to accomplish something. He checked his email constantly. His mind often drifted off to thoughts of the girl in the photocopy, so he didn’t get much done, but at least he looked like he was working. At around four o’clock, an email from the Human Resources department arrived. Martin held his breath and opened it.

The message contained an appointment to attend a teleconference Monday at 9. Attendance would be recorded, and failure to comply would result in disciplinary action. It contained instructions for supervisors with employees on vacation. Otherwise this meeting superseded everything. The signature of the Vice President of Corporate IT had been pasted onto the bottom to give the message authority and gravitas. Once, it was significant that an executive had taken the time to sign a piece of correspondence. But slapping the image of an autograph on a mass email seemed a silly practice to him.

The bluntness of the message did not bode well. They had never informed people they we being laid off via a teleconference before, but there’s a first time for everything.
Great, another three days to wonder what the hell this might be.