dreamscape
03-27-2009, 12:31 AM
Emit Hates Mondays
The light turned green and the deceptive little man, taking long confident strides across an obviously empty road which required no shuffling or backtracking or apologising, was illumined. Emit’s pulse quickened as he began his first tentative steps onto the asphalt, then the wave of automatons behind him hit, forcing him ever onwards with no chance to slow.
Looking up, Emit saw the opposing wall of humanity rushing towards him and the lurching locomotive press at his back. Staring defiantly in the face of all rational physical principles, the collision of these two forces could not possibly end without creating chaos on the street. Emergency services will have to be called, there will bodies everywhere, traffic jams for hours, angry bosses, jobs lost…
The armies clashed, lead units piercing through the enemy front lines through sheer will and inertia. Emit could no longer see the other side of the road through the sweaty bodies and panicked faces before him. People were shuffling directly towards him, their faces clearly reflecting his own confusion.
His mind began to engage in hundreds of tiny calculations. Which way to step, when to slow, which way is she going to go? The inevitable dance seemed clumsy, belying the complexity of the brain’s processing in these instants. Without exception, one had to stop, apologise, look down and squeeze past their insignificant other.
This muddy example of self-organising organisms continued until Emit’s newly polished boots hit the kerb, undoing the morning’s buffing. With an audible sigh of relief Emit strode through into the business precinct at one and a half pace to outdistance the crowd behind him, a vain hope that he could avoid the press at the next junction. Occasionally he had to sidestep oncoming groups or couples, obviously so in love, or discussing such weighty matters, that they couldn’t move in single file for the brief instant that someone else may want to share the sidewalk. Isn’t that what park benches are for?
When he sees his building Emit feels a brief instant of relief which quickly turns to the familiar dread as the memories and emotions associated with the towering grey monstrosity come flooding back. The adrenaline accrued throughout the odyssey undertaken to arrive here suddenly flees him, taking with it any high spirits that might be lurking in the corners of his soul.
Ascending the steps, Emit takes his place with the flock waiting to ride the elevators. He strategically places himself between the two rightmost doors, a vain gamble to cut down his chance of having to wait for the next one. As usual his gamble doesn’t pay off, another win for the dealer as Emit clambers into the leftmost elevator.
Each day thousands of people unwittingly engaged in these small-scale social experiments, naïve participants in the Almighty’s series of behavioural observations (Why won’t my creations talk to each other?). People’s eyes slid off each other like greased palms (a social lubricant?), avoiding human contact like a collection of magnets of pure north polarity, constantly adjusting so as to optimise personal space on all sides. Women sized each other up in their periphery (that is so not in!) and men sized up everything, occasionally daring to look directly at someone (I am so in!).
Searching frantically around for an empty wall to stare at and not finding one, each person finally succumbed to watching the numbers light up, one by one. Emit rides up eight floors, the same number of hours he has to spend withering away before the ride back down. All feign interest in the numbers, considering patterns, amateur mathematical philosophers. When in fact they were all thinking of farting. Emit was sure it was not just him, it was just such a violation of social mores that everybody had a reckless instant every time they got in an elevator and thought, what if I did?
Finally reaching his floor, Emit ingeniously squeezed through the press to exit without touching anybody. He took the shortest steps he could manage as he walked towards his office. As usual, he was greeted by the regular early starters, those that thought their life’s work in this homogeneous grey building would amount to something more if they worked more and faster and harder. He shared polite smiles and awkward waves with a series of people who had never bothered to learn his name.
He sat in his chair, his muscles moulding to the familiar, yet unnatural, curves. He glances up at the clock. Early again. 8:59:42. He watches the seconds tick around, more numbers ever going upward, yet inevitably falling back to nothing. Like most of humanity’s accomplishments, he supposed.
The seconds ticked by, he would not start any earlier than necessary. If the man was going to bend him over Emit would make the experience as short and painless as necessary. 9:00:00. Emit relaxed, leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. Time to get to work.
He shifted around in his chair, trying to nestle into the most comfortable position possible. He adjusted the height, the backrest, trying to attain the perfect ergonomic setup as demonstrated in the annual workshops. He straightened the papers to his left, then his diary to the right. He straightened the papers again, noticing they were not quite aligned with the edge of the desk. Now he was ready.
Time to check the emails. His inbox was crammed with the usual inanity, though he felt obliged to read every word, every character, in case he missed something, in case there was some lead which he could follow for an hour under the pretense of carrying out the superiors’ will. Finding no such tantalising promises, Emit decided he needed a coffee. And it was a conscious decision, not a need, not a preconscious mechanism of stimulus and response, it was a knowing that the act of making and drinking a coffee, then cleaning up after oneself could kill precious minutes.
Jorge from IT was at the coffee machine. Emit wanted to turn around and avoid the pain of the forthcoming conversation. He looked frantically from side to side for an escape, an excuse, but this was a one-way passage. Nobody went this way unless they wanted (needed?) a coffee. He reacted too late, and Jorge had already made eye contact.
“Em! My man! Emmy! Emblematic! Embalming fluid!” Jorge slapped his reluctant amigo on the back, and Emit stumbled forward a step.
“How are you, buddy?” Jorge asked.
“I’m well thanks, Jorge,” said Emit, craning round the nutty expat to see if he could access the coffee machine.
“Please, call me Pal!” Jorge said with a belly laugh, his jovial features crinkling into what Emit usually took for a smile, though he was sure it would make most children aged 8 or less cry into their mother’s skirt.
“Sorry, can I, uh, just,” Emit mumbled, nodding towards the coffee machine with raised eyebrows raised. His erstwhile decision to have coffee had somewhere along the way transformed into a need. “Busy day.”
Jorge rolled his eyes, “Don’t get me started! Maybe we can have a beer after work?”
Emit gave a non-committal grunt. “Later, buddy!” Jorge threw over his shoulder, whistling as he went in search of his next victim.
Emit took his coffee back to his desk. He sipped at it as he occasionally refreshed his email screen, hoping something would come up. It was finished too soon, and in minutes he found himself back at his desk with only his own motivation to get him through.
Emit felt a pressure at the base of his bladder. It seemed that coffee was the procrastinatory blessing that just kept on giving. Somewhere he had read that coffee had no diuretic properties at all, no extra fluid output to input ratio, it was just an increase in the sensation of wanting to go. Whatever, it was good enough for Emit.
He strode down the hallway, past all the shaded offices of the people doing obviously important work, or engaged in vital meetings about the future of the firm. He pushed open the men’s door, and stood in the little passageway before the second door for a moment. There was a kind of symmetry in this threshold that made Emit wonder if he closed his eyes and spun around, would he know which door was which?
The thought of being caught spinning around in the gent’s foyer got the better of him, and he pushed forward into the ultraviolet, whitewashed echo chamber. He chose a cubicle just left of centre and barricaded himself in. Sitting down, Emit began to read the new scrawlings on the wall. Claims about the VP’s mother were overlaid with imprecations about the sexual proclivities of the marketing department, in turn countered by intricately posed indictments on the fertility of the IT department.
The door whined open and Emit’s breath caught for a moment as his quietude was shattered. The steps walked confidently to the nearest cubicle, and a zipper descended. Emit listened to the splash become a steady stream. That’s Greg from finances, Emit thought. He had an uncanny knack of recognising a man by the sound of his urinary expulsion. He wondered how this fit into his evolutionary survival.
As he listened to Greg’s steps echo away down the corridor (finance guys never washed their hands), Emit decided it was time to get back to work. Arriving back at his desk, he again arranged his nest to his short-lived satisfaction. It was then that the bald, sweaty Jeff appeared at his side with a thick bundle of paperwork. With a wink Jeff dropped it on Emit’s desk, as if to say, yes I know I’m not your superior but this is how the **** rolls, buddy.
Somehow relieved that he had a distraction to while away the remaining hours, Emit eyed the paperwork with some scepticism. Whatever it takes, he told himself. He dived into the work with the gusto of a man who knew his bed was waiting for him at the end of the day.
He occasionally looked up at the clock. It was still ticking round, the hands tantalisingly slow in their pursuit of one another, the greyhound second-hand pursuing the tortoise-like minute hand, which not often enough overtook the tectonic plate-like hour hand. He sometimes thought that the hands were actually going backwards so fast they only appeared to be going forwards. His visual system was tricking him. Time was moving backwards.
The hours sludged by. Eventually, finally it was approaching the magic hour. 5pm, when pubs declared happy hour, when the mass exodus from the city’s skyscrapers began in earnest. Emit shuffled his remaining paperwork into neat piles to await him the next morning.
4:59:30. He double checked his pockets, everything on and under his desk. 4:59:53. He watched the seconds pulse around, his muscles coiling, ready to spring.
5:00:00. Emit’s alarm went off. He reached over to turn it off, throwing back his blankets. He sat up and rubbed his face. He hated Mondays.
The light turned green and the deceptive little man, taking long confident strides across an obviously empty road which required no shuffling or backtracking or apologising, was illumined. Emit’s pulse quickened as he began his first tentative steps onto the asphalt, then the wave of automatons behind him hit, forcing him ever onwards with no chance to slow.
Looking up, Emit saw the opposing wall of humanity rushing towards him and the lurching locomotive press at his back. Staring defiantly in the face of all rational physical principles, the collision of these two forces could not possibly end without creating chaos on the street. Emergency services will have to be called, there will bodies everywhere, traffic jams for hours, angry bosses, jobs lost…
The armies clashed, lead units piercing through the enemy front lines through sheer will and inertia. Emit could no longer see the other side of the road through the sweaty bodies and panicked faces before him. People were shuffling directly towards him, their faces clearly reflecting his own confusion.
His mind began to engage in hundreds of tiny calculations. Which way to step, when to slow, which way is she going to go? The inevitable dance seemed clumsy, belying the complexity of the brain’s processing in these instants. Without exception, one had to stop, apologise, look down and squeeze past their insignificant other.
This muddy example of self-organising organisms continued until Emit’s newly polished boots hit the kerb, undoing the morning’s buffing. With an audible sigh of relief Emit strode through into the business precinct at one and a half pace to outdistance the crowd behind him, a vain hope that he could avoid the press at the next junction. Occasionally he had to sidestep oncoming groups or couples, obviously so in love, or discussing such weighty matters, that they couldn’t move in single file for the brief instant that someone else may want to share the sidewalk. Isn’t that what park benches are for?
When he sees his building Emit feels a brief instant of relief which quickly turns to the familiar dread as the memories and emotions associated with the towering grey monstrosity come flooding back. The adrenaline accrued throughout the odyssey undertaken to arrive here suddenly flees him, taking with it any high spirits that might be lurking in the corners of his soul.
Ascending the steps, Emit takes his place with the flock waiting to ride the elevators. He strategically places himself between the two rightmost doors, a vain gamble to cut down his chance of having to wait for the next one. As usual his gamble doesn’t pay off, another win for the dealer as Emit clambers into the leftmost elevator.
Each day thousands of people unwittingly engaged in these small-scale social experiments, naïve participants in the Almighty’s series of behavioural observations (Why won’t my creations talk to each other?). People’s eyes slid off each other like greased palms (a social lubricant?), avoiding human contact like a collection of magnets of pure north polarity, constantly adjusting so as to optimise personal space on all sides. Women sized each other up in their periphery (that is so not in!) and men sized up everything, occasionally daring to look directly at someone (I am so in!).
Searching frantically around for an empty wall to stare at and not finding one, each person finally succumbed to watching the numbers light up, one by one. Emit rides up eight floors, the same number of hours he has to spend withering away before the ride back down. All feign interest in the numbers, considering patterns, amateur mathematical philosophers. When in fact they were all thinking of farting. Emit was sure it was not just him, it was just such a violation of social mores that everybody had a reckless instant every time they got in an elevator and thought, what if I did?
Finally reaching his floor, Emit ingeniously squeezed through the press to exit without touching anybody. He took the shortest steps he could manage as he walked towards his office. As usual, he was greeted by the regular early starters, those that thought their life’s work in this homogeneous grey building would amount to something more if they worked more and faster and harder. He shared polite smiles and awkward waves with a series of people who had never bothered to learn his name.
He sat in his chair, his muscles moulding to the familiar, yet unnatural, curves. He glances up at the clock. Early again. 8:59:42. He watches the seconds tick around, more numbers ever going upward, yet inevitably falling back to nothing. Like most of humanity’s accomplishments, he supposed.
The seconds ticked by, he would not start any earlier than necessary. If the man was going to bend him over Emit would make the experience as short and painless as necessary. 9:00:00. Emit relaxed, leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. Time to get to work.
He shifted around in his chair, trying to nestle into the most comfortable position possible. He adjusted the height, the backrest, trying to attain the perfect ergonomic setup as demonstrated in the annual workshops. He straightened the papers to his left, then his diary to the right. He straightened the papers again, noticing they were not quite aligned with the edge of the desk. Now he was ready.
Time to check the emails. His inbox was crammed with the usual inanity, though he felt obliged to read every word, every character, in case he missed something, in case there was some lead which he could follow for an hour under the pretense of carrying out the superiors’ will. Finding no such tantalising promises, Emit decided he needed a coffee. And it was a conscious decision, not a need, not a preconscious mechanism of stimulus and response, it was a knowing that the act of making and drinking a coffee, then cleaning up after oneself could kill precious minutes.
Jorge from IT was at the coffee machine. Emit wanted to turn around and avoid the pain of the forthcoming conversation. He looked frantically from side to side for an escape, an excuse, but this was a one-way passage. Nobody went this way unless they wanted (needed?) a coffee. He reacted too late, and Jorge had already made eye contact.
“Em! My man! Emmy! Emblematic! Embalming fluid!” Jorge slapped his reluctant amigo on the back, and Emit stumbled forward a step.
“How are you, buddy?” Jorge asked.
“I’m well thanks, Jorge,” said Emit, craning round the nutty expat to see if he could access the coffee machine.
“Please, call me Pal!” Jorge said with a belly laugh, his jovial features crinkling into what Emit usually took for a smile, though he was sure it would make most children aged 8 or less cry into their mother’s skirt.
“Sorry, can I, uh, just,” Emit mumbled, nodding towards the coffee machine with raised eyebrows raised. His erstwhile decision to have coffee had somewhere along the way transformed into a need. “Busy day.”
Jorge rolled his eyes, “Don’t get me started! Maybe we can have a beer after work?”
Emit gave a non-committal grunt. “Later, buddy!” Jorge threw over his shoulder, whistling as he went in search of his next victim.
Emit took his coffee back to his desk. He sipped at it as he occasionally refreshed his email screen, hoping something would come up. It was finished too soon, and in minutes he found himself back at his desk with only his own motivation to get him through.
Emit felt a pressure at the base of his bladder. It seemed that coffee was the procrastinatory blessing that just kept on giving. Somewhere he had read that coffee had no diuretic properties at all, no extra fluid output to input ratio, it was just an increase in the sensation of wanting to go. Whatever, it was good enough for Emit.
He strode down the hallway, past all the shaded offices of the people doing obviously important work, or engaged in vital meetings about the future of the firm. He pushed open the men’s door, and stood in the little passageway before the second door for a moment. There was a kind of symmetry in this threshold that made Emit wonder if he closed his eyes and spun around, would he know which door was which?
The thought of being caught spinning around in the gent’s foyer got the better of him, and he pushed forward into the ultraviolet, whitewashed echo chamber. He chose a cubicle just left of centre and barricaded himself in. Sitting down, Emit began to read the new scrawlings on the wall. Claims about the VP’s mother were overlaid with imprecations about the sexual proclivities of the marketing department, in turn countered by intricately posed indictments on the fertility of the IT department.
The door whined open and Emit’s breath caught for a moment as his quietude was shattered. The steps walked confidently to the nearest cubicle, and a zipper descended. Emit listened to the splash become a steady stream. That’s Greg from finances, Emit thought. He had an uncanny knack of recognising a man by the sound of his urinary expulsion. He wondered how this fit into his evolutionary survival.
As he listened to Greg’s steps echo away down the corridor (finance guys never washed their hands), Emit decided it was time to get back to work. Arriving back at his desk, he again arranged his nest to his short-lived satisfaction. It was then that the bald, sweaty Jeff appeared at his side with a thick bundle of paperwork. With a wink Jeff dropped it on Emit’s desk, as if to say, yes I know I’m not your superior but this is how the **** rolls, buddy.
Somehow relieved that he had a distraction to while away the remaining hours, Emit eyed the paperwork with some scepticism. Whatever it takes, he told himself. He dived into the work with the gusto of a man who knew his bed was waiting for him at the end of the day.
He occasionally looked up at the clock. It was still ticking round, the hands tantalisingly slow in their pursuit of one another, the greyhound second-hand pursuing the tortoise-like minute hand, which not often enough overtook the tectonic plate-like hour hand. He sometimes thought that the hands were actually going backwards so fast they only appeared to be going forwards. His visual system was tricking him. Time was moving backwards.
The hours sludged by. Eventually, finally it was approaching the magic hour. 5pm, when pubs declared happy hour, when the mass exodus from the city’s skyscrapers began in earnest. Emit shuffled his remaining paperwork into neat piles to await him the next morning.
4:59:30. He double checked his pockets, everything on and under his desk. 4:59:53. He watched the seconds pulse around, his muscles coiling, ready to spring.
5:00:00. Emit’s alarm went off. He reached over to turn it off, throwing back his blankets. He sat up and rubbed his face. He hated Mondays.