More stories. In lieu of actual content.
Nov. 21st, 2006 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolven7From a Stone
October, 24
And there it is. Pouring from the rock in front of him, as they told him it would be. He places his face under the font and drinks, knowing that it’s over, now; knowing that it’s time to let it all go.
October, 07
She walked into his office, imperious, slamming the door open, with her sensible heels pounding the floor. He knew their routine, and was prepared for it, this time.
“I’ve got the report, right here, Miranda. Don’t start with me, right now.” He shoved the sheaf of papers out in front of him, and she snatched it out of his hands.
“Three days!” she yelled. “I’ve been waiting for this for three days! Do you have any idea how much shit I’ve gone through, for this? For you? I can’t believe you would be this irresponsible, this… this thoughtless!” She was breathing hard, making her shirt ride up, a little, with each intake. Soon she was completely dishevelled, shirt tails out of her black skirt, showing under her suit jacket, hair all over the place. He thought she looked very pretty, but…
“Well, Henry? What do you have to say for yourself?” But damn, was she an ungrateful bitch.
Well, Miranda, I have to say that I’ve been working on this for three straight fucking days, and, honestly, if you wanted it done any faster, you should have done it your damned self. “I’m sorry, Miranda, things piled up and I couldn’t give it the attention it deserved, and… I’m sorry.” The papers on his desk drew his eyes, leaving the top of his head to bear the brunt of the tirade that was coming.
“You’re damn right you’re sorry, you idiot. What the hell? I mean what the hell? I could be fired for coddling you, this much. Do you understand that? I could lose my fucking job. I like you, Henry, but you really need to get on the ball, here. You can’t let one project slide, just because some other projects crop up, in the mean time. You have to learn to pace yourself and…”
He wanted to wave her away. He could see it in his mind, the set of his shoulders, the deliberate adjustment of his glasses, late afternoon sunlight glinting off the gold wire frames, beginning to shuffle his other, far more important work back into order. He would lift his arm, extend his hand and just… flick it, twice. Complete dismissal, in the most minimal of gestures, and he would make her feel in less time how she had made him feel for the past 15 years. But that wasn’t him.
In his entire time working for the information systems company of Ball, Rushat, and Ketsal, Henry had never once dismissed anyone. He had been dismissed by everyone from the Vice President in Charge of Postal Deployment to the CIO of the whole company, but he had never once dismissed another. But he really wanted to, right now. Instead of getting himself demoted to Library Coffee Technician, though, he sat there, and looked appropriately cowed, waiting for her to finish telling him how much she had done for him, how hard her job was, and why he should get down on his knees, every day, and thank all the gods that ever were that she existed, to keep his ass out of the fire.
She finally stopped talking and was staring at him, waiting. “I know, Miranda. Thank you. It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t, Henry. You can’t expect to get anywhere, if you don’t take some damned initiative. Get your head in the game.” She turned out the door and slammed it, again, on her way out.
There were two things Miranda had never understood, about Henry, and what he did. 1) Henry didn’t want to “get anywhere.” He was perfectly happy doing research and development in the satellite office, with his wooden floors and desk, and his slow, lazy fan; it made him feel like a noir detective, in his slacks, shirt, and suspenders. If he were allowed to wear a hat inside the building, it would have been a fedora. 2) Research and development takes time. Even for someone as obviously talented as Henry, it took time to find all the key elements of a new service or product, and extend them to their full capacity, in the exiting framework of the company. Had it been anyone but Henry, on this new project, she’d have been lucky if she had gotten the preliminary report in three weeks. He shut off his computer, and filed his papers. It was five-thirty, and that meant quitting time, no matter what the day had held. It’d be getting dark soon.
Henry did know that he was talented. He knew that they needed him to work hard and do what he did absolutely best. Someone in the middle of the management food chain obviously had what they thought was a “tough love” approach, which basically meant yelling at the employees, when they did well, and yelling at them more when they screwed up. Henry just loved his work enough to not give a damn, most days. As long as they let him work, they could pretend to be mad at him all they wanted.
He stepped onto the train platform, as the doors closed behind him, the ride home as uneventful as ever. He walked up the front stairs to his apartment. First floor: Bachelor Styles, Home-Cooked Meals for One, and Prime-Time Television; everybody off. Henry knew how to make himself laugh. Sometimes that was the only thing that made coming home tolerable. That and things he snuck home from the office, to play with in his off-time. He walked into the apartment and placed his coat on the hook by the door, pulled the disk from his pocket, so he wouldn’t have to look for it later. He was still smiling to himself, as he sat down in front of the television and hooked the video cable in to his laptop; he wanted to work with the big screen, for this. As the images and text came scrolling up the screen, the smile slowly slid from Henry’s face, replaced by the unconscious focus it gained when he was working. At some point he slipped into unconsciousness.
His dreams are double-spiral granite quarry walls, and she is always at the bottom, in the water, waiting for him to reach her and take what is his, what is hers, what is theirs. He never sees her face, but he knows the cast of her shoulders, the lay of her hair on her forehead, and he has known it all of his life. He’s only been here three or four times, in the last ten years, but each time, he sees a little more. The quarry was once just a distant hole in the ground, and she was at its edge. Now she sits in the centre of the quarry-pond, her feet describing a pattern and a word, in the water. The water is churning, bubbling, reddening. Henry
October, 08
woke up sweating, and relived the minute details of the dream, everything he touched and saw, except for her. He hadn’t seen her face, never touched her skin. Not yet. But he would, soon. He was closer, every time. A little further down the path, toward her and toward the centre. That had to mean something, otherwise…
He ran his sweat-soaked hands through his hair, and looked toward the living room. He shook his head clear, and felt ashamed of himself for the power his dreams had, first thing, in the morning. He wanted to get a shower, quickly, so that he could work on the project snuck from work, a bit more, before he had to return it. He knew that if he didn’t get started, now, he’d never know the details in time to make a bid for it; it would get shuffled to a design and build team, and Henry would never see it, again. He couldn’t allow that to happen. It was too important. He turned the water on, and started the CD player going, with Iggy Pop belting out “Lust for Life” across the apartment. Many people would be surprised at Henry’s tastes, he mused, but they just saw the boring but brilliant R&D guy; underneath was a darker, more dangerous Henry. He was like a superhero, that way. He laughed out loud, at himself. The hot water ran blood to his ears, and the throbbing pulse served to wake him up, further, and shake the last remnants of the dream.
Getting out of the shower, and to the living room, he looked at the pictures and notes, again. The theory was sound, and the equations worked, when Henry checked them. There was no way this was a stumble, an accident. Someone had found a way transmute matter on a quantum level; changing one kind of atom into another, with relatively little energy expenditure.
It was too simple. It had to be a joke. He thought about it on the train, all the way to work. The train kept rolling, Henry kept thinking. When he got inside the satellite office-- an unassuming five-storey building of old brick-- Henry told Carmile, the functionary at the front desk, to place a call to Miranda’s office and tell them he wanted the Quantum Metamorphosis project to himself. He went to his office to wait for the inevitable conference call, preparing himself for the hour-long conversation at the end of which they would not only let him have it, but they would beg him to take it. Henry smiled, and held on to that thought. It was going to be a long few weeks; he’d need all the cheer he could get.
October, 17
The black shifts to crimson, at the edges of his vision. It’s all gone wrong. She’s got no leg to stand on, and she’s screaming in his face. What happened to the smiling welcoming woman he saw from afar? What is this glass encased thing, before him, this rippling surface and expansive horizon? The plane bubbles and expands, red cracks expressing through the liquid skin and as it explodes, the shards of red glass embedding themselves in his body, he sees himself in her, and he understands what has happened.
Henry was very tired. His skin was sallow, his eyes sunken, hollow. Sunken, hollow, sallow… Shallow? He couldn’t stop making connections like that, most days, now, and it had only been a little over a week since he started his work on the project. It was all about connections, now, it was all about the interconnections between large and the small, the simple and the complex. He understood that now.
He only really remembered four out of the last nine days, but due to the dreams he refused to shave, anymore. Or to get his hair cut, or trim his toenails, or fingernails past a certain length. There was too much of a chance of cutting himself, in most of those activities, and he couldn’t bear to think what that would mean. So much loss, so much potential… He shook his head and closed his eyes, because it was time for the daily call into the office. It was the only way they would allow him to work from home. He had to do the calls, or they would take the project away, and now, more than ever, he could not, would not allow that to happen. He dialled the phone and waited for Miranda to answer, on the other end, steeling himself for the hardened curt voice, on the other end.
“Good morning, Henry.”
“Miranda. This is my 8am check-in, for Tuesday, October 17, 2006.”
“Thank you, Henry. Have a good morning… Henry, have you--?”
“Thank you, Miranda. Goodbye.” And he hung up. He was hearing something, toward the end of their daily calls, these days, but he couldn’t allow himself to focus on that. He was four lines of code from finishing this project, from having a working model to show to the partners. Nothing would be allowed to distract him, now, no matter how good it felt to hear concern in her voice, to hear the sound of her wondering for his well-being… It would all be fine, soon enough. He just had to figure out these last few lines, and that wouldn’t be too hard. There was an online database for all professionals working in the field of bioengineering, and even though he wasn’t technically in the field, a vague enough description of his work had gotten him in with the maintainers of the site. It wasn’t too difficult to find what he was looking for, in the end; to program the model’s last few lines, using the chemical composition of human blood, along with the algorithm for changing the atomic structure of one thing into another. To create a life-form that had glass for blood and stone for muscle… It was a dream, come true.
He was blacking out, again. The darkness creeping in at the edges, and he didn’t know when he’d wake up, or what he’d do, in the meantime, but he could at least count on the fact that the calls would be made. He thought about this as he slipped under, again. Maybe that was why Miranda sounded worried, recently. What did he sound like, when he went under? What did he say and do? No time to worry about that, now.
He placed his fingers on the keyboard, and waited. There was work to be done, even if he wasn’t technically sure how he was doing it. He comforted himself with a memory of the discovery of the double-helix: James Watson and two snakes made of flame dancing in a fireplace. A dream? Perhaps a vision. If the unconscious mind could process that, then who was he to question the results he got during his blackouts? Who was he?
October, 24
He cannot see her face. The outline of her body is indistinct, vague. He wants to know what’s been done, but he can’t quite
told them what he wanted, when he got in the door. He hadn’t been to the main office, in months, this thing made of metal and glass, this spike in the centre of the city. The statue in the lobby was an abstract masterpiece, purchased for a song, but all Henry could see, when he looked at it, was the idea of an uneasy fluttering in his stomach, like coming home to the expectations of your family, after many years in another country. He looked away and saw her coming toward him around the opposite corner and he slowed his breathing, deliberately. He calmed himself and brought his thoughts to a stand-still, holding in his right hand, still in his jacket pocket, the prototype. The small device, the size of a flash drive, waiting for him to activate it, and show the firm what he was
worth the wait. He always knew she would be; that this moment would define the rest of time and space for the both of them. He had always hated her for being so rigid, so sharp-edged, but now, here at the centre of the quarry, down in the depths, he understood that it was simply who she was, trying to escape, waiting to be set free. She was slow liquid, sharp and cold, definite, but still able to fill a space. She was the perfect juxtaposition of the static and the dynamic, as a fluid and a solid, able to crack, to break, to bend, to melt, drip, run. But first he had to get rid of the
shelled out the cash for you to sit at home and play with your fucking toys, Henry! The partners want results, not half-assed theories, from some geek in the satellite office! Are we clear?”
Henry opened his eyes, closed since she started her diatribe, and looked at her for the first time. He saw through the corporate tripe, down to who and what she really was, and she knew it. He knew that she could feel it, too, their connection. It’s what she had been fostering with her cold words, and sharp actions. The tenderness and care was new, because he was new. Blood no longer flowed hotly to his face, when she yelled at him; instead it slowly travelled in its latticework path of veins and arteries, calming and collecting him in his core.
Henry stood with his right hand in his suit jacket pocket, his weight shifted to his right foot; an insolent, arrogant stance. The afternoon sun glinted off his wire-frame glasses as he lifted his hand out of the pocket, extended his arm to its full length and
welcomes her. The knowledge of who and what they are, their interlocking dance, around and around, pounding, cooling, heating slowing, freezing has finally begun, and the shard of her in his heart has always been here. This pumping shrapnel has always been waiting for him to find the right combination to make it beat again. He is her offering, and she is his, and the gods have always smiled on him, knowing what he would one day
do, Henry? What did you do?”
He smiled, again, and slipped to his knees, his flesh hardening, as the walls and floor grew softer, fibrous. On their knees, eye to eye, for the first time, Henry removed the device from his chest, and handed it to Miranda. With a smile, she drove it into her heart. All her life she’s known what this
is. Pouring from the rock in front of them, as they knew it would be. They place their faces under the twin fonts and drink, knowing that it’s over, now; knowing that it’s time to let it all go.
©Damien Williams. All Rights Reserved
Manhattan Transfer - [Another Night in Tunisia]--- Some cute things hidden, in there. Enjoy.
Maybe some actual thoughts, later, after I get some work done.
