Grunt 'n' Pokers
SBNoMSBNoMJim pursed his lips into the warm trickle of water and grimaced as it gurgled bitterly down his throat. He tried to remember how many glasses he'd had that day. Not enough, he determined. Not nearly enough.
He stood up straight, more or less, and silver worms swam across his field of vision. They resolved into a deep broth of twinkling dust motes, lit coldly by construction lights, in a wide drywall corridor stretching off into infinity. He sighed and started walking, straightening his tie as he went. The clopping of his feet echoed loudly around him.
He stopped in front of a huge, intricate, framed map of the Corporation, with a rainbow colored arrow that said: YOU ARE HERE. As he stood glaring at the map, he heard a sound coming from far away, swelling to familiarity; he turned and saw Old Bill leering at him from his mail cart. Bill's thin, age-beaten body hunched over the steering wheel of the cart like a giant wrinkled claw, with a weird, pointy head stuck at the wrong angle between its fingers.
"Want a ride?" Bill shrieked.
Jim cleared his throat and straightened his tie. "Sure," he said, smiling dimly. He walked over and sat in the padded orange seat next to the old man. The electric motor hummed to life, and they began rolling down the hall. The cart traveled very slowly, but Old Bill bent down over the steering wheel as if he were driving a motorcycle going a hundred miles an hour.
Suddenly he rotated his misshapen head to stare wildly at Jim with his good eye. "My, don't we look pretty ta-day Mr. Jim!" he said, in his bizarre voice. "Where you be the taking ta-day, sir?"
Jim stared uncomprehendingly at the old man. Like many people, he lived in a perpetual haze of fear, which things others said sometimes did not penetrate. "How are you, Bill?" he asked, not because he cared, but to kill the fear.
Old Bill rocked back and forth with glee, as if Jim had said something which delighted him. Then he stopped and leaned toward Jim conspiratorially. He said: "Questions can open up the inner darkness of a man's soul. I wouldn't be asking such questions if I were you, unless you're prepared to invoke the answer!" He leaned back and howled with laughter, as if he had said something hysterically funny. Jim winced and shrank a little into his seat. Serves me right for asking, he thought.
"Now sir," said Old Bill, regaining control of himself, "Where you be the taking ta-day?"
Jim suddenly realized what he was being asked. "Mr. Bob's office."
"Good choice sir, very good choice. For that we'll need, the ela-vater." They turned a corner and stopped in front of the huge steel doors. Old Bill leaned out and struck the UP button. Booming echoes of machinery issued forth. Presently the doors slid open and the cart rolled inside.
The elevator was a sterile, fluorescent white chamber. Old Bill reached out a gnarled hand and punched one of the lighted buttons. Without withdrawing his arm, he pointed to an unmarked row of buttons below the GARAGE button. "Do you know where those buttons go?" he rasped.
"No."
"I'll tell you where they go," Bill said in a hoarse whisper. "They go to the bottom of the ocean."
The cart rolled into a gigantic white room. The ceiling was soundproof tile and fluorescent panels, with sprinklers every ten feet. The room was awash with noise, the noise of people talking, telephones ringing, computer keys clicking, printers printing, copiers copying. It was the sound of business. The room was separated by orange partitions into hundreds of small cubicles. Bill's little mail cart whined to a stop in front of one of the cubicles, and Jim hopped out, relieved to get away from the eccentric old man. Old Bill dropped a handful of envelopes into the "in" basket on the desk of a startled secretary, and rolled away, cackling to himself, "one for you, aand one for yooouu ..."
Jim straightened his tie and walked into the cubicle of Mr. Bob. Mr. Bob's cubicle was a picture of order and perfection. A tiny palm tree stood in the corner of his cube, perfectly symmetrical between his filing cabinet and his computer terminal. Bob himself was the perfect businessman in a blue suit and a red power tie. His starched cuffs stuck out at exactly the right length from his jacket sleeves. He sat at a Formica desk, in a padded powder blue chair, staring at a framed picture that he was holding in his hand.
Jim sat down in one of the orange chairs facing Bob's desk. "Bob," he said, "I've just been down to Production Contract Scheduling Control. I've been checking up on this problem with the 220-RFA scheduling requests. I talked with Chuck about getting a requisition for a servicing route report, but he told me that I have to submit a 330 to Contract Servicing. But I can't get a 330 without clearance from Contract Administration. That's why I'm here to see you."
Bob sat still for a moment. Then he slowly raised his head and looked at Jim. "Well hello, Jim!" he said, smiling wanly. "Why don't you have a seat." He went back to staring at the picture in his hand.
Jim frowned, perplexed. "This is serious, Bob," he said. "If I can't get clearance for a 330, I'm stuck. I'll have to go apply for a 55SD. And that could take weeks. I need your help to get this pushed through."
"That's nice, Jim," Bob said sleepily. Carefully, moving as if he were drugged, he reached over and set the picture down on his desk. It was a photograph of himself and his family. His wife and children stood in the background of the picture, frowning fiercely. He was down on all fours in the foreground, with a grimace of pain on his face. "I'm too old for that kind of thing, Jim," he said. The tone of his voice shifted from boredom and despair to dreamy wonder as he drawled, "Do you ever think about the meaning of life, Jim?"
Jim couldn't think of anything to say. He straightened his tie. "No," he said.
Bob looked at Jim with a far-away smile. "I think life is like a dream," he said, "and all the people are just people in my dream! And if I ever woke up, everyone would just disappear! Just...pop! Like a soap bubble! Do you think that would be a good thing, Jim?"
Jim stood up. "I think I'll go get you a cup of coffee, Bob. Does that sound good? A nice cup of coffee?"
Bob frowned. He seemed to remember something. "Cup ... of coffee. Coffee ... cup. Cup. Coffee cup." He reached down, opened a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a black coffee cup. He set it down on the desk and looked at it, frowning. He looked down at his lap and sighed raggedly. Then he straightened up and looked at Jim, all at once the stern businessman. "Jim, did you discuss this problem with Contract Control?"
"No, Bob, I wanted to run it by you first."
"Well, then, let's take a look at it over a cup of coffee. By God, somebody's got to do some work in this damn place."Jim let out a long sigh of relief. Thank God, he thought. Now we can get back to business as usual.
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