After pushing buttons, we take our dinners and sleep on cots, all the while sailing through galaxies of birds, of stars. I understand this location, as hidden as humanly possible, authorities on the lookout and fugitives going right over their heads.
On my first day of training, I recognize the man pushing buttons at the end of the row of button pushers.
“Barnacle Toby?”
“Oh hey, it’s you!” He gives me a big, unexpected hug and a punch to the shoulder. “You can call me Harold. After all, I’m not a barnacle anymore.”
“Harold,” I say, “what are you doing here?”
“Kicked out of the ocean for changing the emotional pH of my sector. My feelings were killing all the surrounding aquatic life. I have that effect on people, and apparently also on shrimp.” Harold hands me a cup and fills it with coffee. “The AFT assigned me here about a month ago.”
“It’s so good to see a familiar face,” I say, but I’m surprised I even recognize him without his strata of crabs and shells and seaweed. I’m surprised he recognizes me.
“Same to you, buddy! What brings you to this esteemed locale?”
“Oh, you know, a botched murder situation.”
“Right, right, right. Well then, you’ll fit in here perfectly.”
“What does that mean?”
The supervisor walks by and Harold goes quiet. He waits until she’s out of earshot. “Ah … You don’t know what the buttons are for, do you?” he says.
“No, I didn’t think anyone knew.” Frankly, I was starting to wonder if the buttons did anything at all. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d worked a job with no discernible impact.
Harold leans in close, so his mouth is nearly touching the edge of my ear. “Bombs,” he whispers. “As in, dropping them.”
Each combination of button maneuvers drops a bomb on a specified location. The sequences are verified and predetermined by the owners of the blimp. Harold thinks the owners are a conglomeration of allied countries, or a single evil billionaire, or a supervillain, or a real estate mogul bombing his own properties and making hay with the insurance money.
Harold explains that if the supervisor doesn’t touch the buttons, then technically, she doesn’t drop the bombs. And if the supervisor doesn’t drop the bombs, then neither does the owner of the blimp. And since fugitive temps are hidden and without recourse, we technically don’t exist, at least not in the eyes of the law. And if no one drops the bombs, no one can be blamed for dropping the bombs, and no one can be tried, and no one can be hanged, and no one can be held accountable, and it’s maybe as if the bombs were released by none other than the wide and wondrous sky itself.
On his cot, Harold gets philosophical. “You know what they don’t tell you about being a barnacle?” he asks, unprompted.
“What’s that?”
“They don’t tell you that you never stop feeling like a barnacle, not really. Sure, you can walk and run and jump again. You can give your fellow temp a hug or a cup of coffee. You can climb aboard a zeppelin. Your dick can even return to its normal, totally average size. But that saltwater kick is still in your veins. It doesn’t go away.”
I wonder if it’s still in my veins too. If I summon it, could I feel the ocean in an instant? Am I still a pirate, somewhere deep? Am I still a mannequin? Am I still a girl pretending to be a ghost? Thank goodness I’m sitting down, because the feelings rush over me like a large, violent wave, and for a moment I lose my balance and can’t breathe. Then I remember what Harold told me about his feelings, their way of changing the pH, expanding, infiltrating. Hurting.
The next morning, one of our colleagues refuses to press her buttons.
“What do you mean, refuse?” the supervisor asks.
“I refuse,” the temp says again.
“Refuse how?”
“I refuse vehemently.”
Harold gives me a look, mouths uh-oh.
“Vehemently?” the supervisor repeats, eyes bulging.
“At the very most, I refuse vehemently. At the very least, I refuse firmly. Firmly like a good mattress.”
“And on what grounds?”
“Which grounds where?”
“On what grounds do you refuse firmly, like a good mattress?”
“Not on grounds, on clouds.”
“What kind of clouds?”
“Moral ones,” our colleague says. “I refuse on moral clouds.”
“This is preposterous,” the supervisor says. She’s pacing around the blimp, arms clasped behind her back. “I’ve never heard of such a thing—morals!”
“Well, life is full of firsts.”
“You know the consequence of insubordination, don’t you?”
“I do,” our coworker says, her feet firmly planted.
Would my feet be as firm as hers, or even as firm as a good mattress? I haven’t been instructed to press a single button yet, not until I complete my training. What kind of buttons will these buttons press inside me?
“Very well,” the supervisor says. She opens a hatch and shoves our colleague out into the moral clouds. “What a waste of a morning!” the supervisor says, wiping her hands and shaking her head, walking to her office. She turns back one last time. “Harold, will you take over for the unmanned buttons?”
Harold nods and sinks into his chair. With a combination of several jabs, he releases a bomb on who knows where, what, whom.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he says, but no one is looking at him. We’re all looking at the hatch, now closed, pondering its hatch-like capabilities with our mouths hanging open, unhatched.
I think about the fallen temp, dropping like a bomb herself, and it gives me an idea, a sort of dirigible plan that will burst if I’m not careful.
My necklace burns around my neck.
“Something brewing, eh?” the Chairman says, perched on the edge of my cot, pistachios in hand.
“Always,” I say, happy to see a familiar face.
“I never thought I’d make it to heaven, but this sure is close!” he says, peering out the zeppelin’s window. “Who’s a man about town now? More like a man above town!”
I ask the Chairman of the Board, “If you wanted to find a series of codes, codes for, say, dropping bombs, where would you look?”
“Where would I look?” he says, and in an instant, he’s gone. It’s as if the answer to my question has climbed from my necklace and into my head.
When everyone on board is asleep, I rummage through the supervisor’s desk and find her own leather-bound planner. It looks just like mine. Is the supervisor a temp too? In the planner, there are button combinations for every location in the city, in the sea, in the world, beyond. Longitudes and latitudes for everything I love.
The trick is to hit the prison at just the right angle, so as not to injure the inmates or the guards. If I pick the right location in the vicinity as opposed to straight on, I can allow for their escape. A little bit of freedom. For Carl.
It’s the fifth button, and then a hold on the seventeenth button to a count of nine, then three short punches on button number six.
It takes more time to press the buttons than it does for the alarms to sound.
“What were you thinking?” Harold asks, pulling me away from the buttons. “You know the consequence for insubordination!”
“Harold, subordination doesn’t lead to the steadiness.” As soon as I say it, I know it’s true. A lump rises in my throat, and I’m overcome with emotion. “I want to feel my feet on the ground, forever. I want to be a standard human person with a place to belong. How can I ever become permanent if I don’t travel through some moral clouds?”
Harold smiles. “There’s the barnacle I used to know,” he says, but I haven’t the faintest idea what kind of barnacle I used to be, or what kind of barnacle I’ve become. What does he know about me? What does anyone know? That’s the point.
“You,” the supervisor says, running toward us. “What were you thinking?”
“I was just thinking differently.”
“Who said you get to think differently?”
“No one.”
“And who is this no one?”
“Not anyone. Not you.”
“That’s right,” she seethes. “I didn’t say anything about thinking. I didn’t say anything at all! How does this all work, without me? Without me!” the supervisor yells.
The other fugitive temps sit silently at their button stations.
“You think you can hit just any old button, whenever you want?” She slams her palm down on several buttons at a time as a demonstration, dropping bombs all over.
“Is that absolutely necessary?” Harold asks, barely audible.
“Oh, it’s necessary. It’s necessary. I’m proving a point!”
The supervisor is losing control. She shoves Harold out of the way and heads straight for me.
“Thank you for the opportunity,” I say, “but it’s time to submit my notice.”
I unlock the hatch.
I remember the plank.
I remember how to fall, and so, I jump.
The clouds, one by one, lift toward me and race away, as though the sky moves while I stay perfectly still. Faster and faster into the air, I feel the world rushing ahead, speeding into motion, deadly as concrete.
The Chairman was smart to suggest a parachute, and when the moment arrives, I pull it and it blossoms.
Now I float easily, carried by the wind. In the distance, rubble everywhere. The supervisor’s tantrum has released bombs here and there, all over. There, the murder shack, gone. There, the bank, blown to smithereens. The safe looks so tiny from this height, like a toy, sprung loose and unlocked. I make out the smallest figurine version of Laurette, masked and ready, loading sacks of money into larger sacks.
“Laurette!” I yell.
Maybe it’s the altitude, the lack of oxygen, but Laurette sees me and waves. “Oh, honey! Where will you go now?” she calls.
“I never know!” I say.
Laurette nods with a deep swing of chin to chest. I’m a double fugitive, a fugitive twice removed. “Good luck to you forever!” she says, and she waves with her whole arm, finger to shoulder.
I fall in parallel to buildings as high as the sky. Through the windows, people looking out windows, looking at me, looking at the decimation of the city. Through the windows, other windows, doorways flanked with office plants and leather furniture. Boardrooms, boardrooms, boardrooms.
There, the prison—I’ve hit my mark. The gates are thrown open, prisoners running out and through the forest, over the bridge, into town. I see Carl’s buddy, running for the hills. I see Carl, standing near the fractured fence, his eyes brimming with recognition. Again, the altitude.
“Hey buddy!” I yell in Carl’s direction.
He doesn’t respond. Am I talking to myself? I’m still awfully high up.
“Hey buddy!” I say again.
“You’re not my buddy,” he says. “You’re no buddy of mine.”
“Carl! I did this for you! This loving, solitary thing!”
“Solitary? What do you know about solitary? You left me here to rot in solitary.”
The closer the parachute brings me to Carl, the farther away he seems. I can’t help but feel angry with him and the way he shows his appreciation for my hard work, my dedication. I’m shocked to realize I expected more, more than what I was promised, more than something short term. I feel silly for expecting anything at all.
“We’re better at doing time,” I say, “when we do it together.”
Carl looks at me once more, then runs off with the other prisoners. He doesn’t look back.
I see them race forward together, trailing through the city, fugitives, all of us.
My parachute hovers over a hole in the ground, perhaps the bomb’s crater, and I allow the drop to continue down, my heart still broken, down, I hope, to the center of the earth. The flower of the parachute deflates and leaves me stuck at the bottom of the hole, which opens into a hidden tunnel.
I scramble like a rodent, elbows greased with mud. The tunnel widens and shrinks and widens and squeezes and widens to reveal strings of lights, brightening the path.
I crawl.
I’ve gone from cloud dweller to subterranean creature.
The tunnel is soft, wet. The pulp of the earth seeps under my nails. Does earth under a nail make the nail a claw? And then a rockier passage, then I journey to the right and the mud changes, sewage puddles under knees, the grout of swirling oils and fibers, measureless caverns, a different trail of knee marks, of claw marks, a different smell, no, a stench, and I understand, of course, this is a detour, a false tunnel, a carpal tunnel, a corporeal tunnel, not the true tunnel, probably a dead end, and what will I do, where will I go, how will I survive, especially if the lights go out?
The lights go out.
In the perfect darkness I feel calm, maybe even happy. I feel the floating joy of a world without walls, without bodies, without days, without a single worldly thing. I feel my face and I don’t know how it’s positioned in relation to the sun. This lack of perspective somehow makes me hopeful. I’m a seed unsprouted. I think I even smile. I think I even sleep.
Time moves and then does not move. The darkness schedules an illusion of motion, an illusion of stopping, could be backward, could be forward, timecards punching and unpunching. Time travel is my newest skill, in the wormhole with the mud and the muck and the worms, the silent, earthen company I keep.
I think I even sleep, then I go ahead and sleep some more.
It might be minutes, months.
From just above my head, or perhaps from just below, a hand pulls at my collar and yanks until my knees respond, my cramped joints unravel, and I see that I can stand up perfectly straight. A clearing. I shake off the animal I’ve become and roll my spine until I’m walking tall, shuffling with half steps. The hand adjusts my shoulders, lifts my wrist to grab a ladder, and, holding mostly steady, with a bit of guidance, I raise my leg and my chin. I climb into the cave of the witch.
PAPER WORK
“Not a witch, per se,” she says. “I prefer Director of Pamphlets.”
She hands me a business card, and then, “Here, have an extra.”
She’s young for a director, and frazzled, and generous with laughter, and her hair shines like a wave of charitable donations.
She hands me a stack of pamphlets to peruse. It’s painful to look at them, and they sting to the touch. Fine little nicks in the flesh of my fingers, and I think, Do they have teeth? Are they enchanted?
“It hurts,” I say.
“The pamphlets are also hurting,” she says, stroking one with a coarse, knobby thumb. “We hurt each other. We need each other.” Her nose is as slim and straight as a bone-folded binding.
“I’m looking for a new placement,” I say, furious with myself. Even without Farren, I flee from job to job. The steadiness evades me, and I can’t help myself. When I see a job, it needs taking.
“I sure could use an extra set of hands,” she says. “These days, we have a lot of information to disseminate. Killers on the loose. Bombs in the skies. Dangerous times!”
The cave is damp and cold, and she is alone here, the Director of Pamphlets, with her pamphlets on her desk and the algae on the walls molding dank and dark and hostile, and I picture her lungs full of the same variety of vicious growth. I feel her loneliness like a stalactite stuck to the roof of my mouth. She folds new pamphlets of magenta and chartreuse, her fingers covered in cuts and burns.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“This is the corridor for the alchemy of company literature.”
She leads me to the entrance of the cave and points down the street. It looks like a normal street.
“Door to door,” she says. “You know the drill, don’t you? Here’s your uniform.”
She drapes me in a nonprofit poncho full of pockets, to carry the many pamphlets. She smiles.
�
��Won’t you join me on my first day?” I ask, assuming I need some supervision.
“No,” she laughs. “I can’t leave!”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t let me leave,” she gasps, suddenly grabbing my arm. “And don’t come back,” she says, “until every pamphlet has a home.”
“Every pamphlet?”
“It’s essential,” she says, “that every pamphlet is distributed. If you don’t distribute every pamphlet, bad things happen.”
“What kinds of bad things?”
“Oh, that’s not important!” Away and into the world with a placement I placed for myself.
Here I am, the knocker of doors. Here I am, the distributor of pamphlets. Do you recognize this man? Do you know how to stay safe in the event of an attack? Have you seen something, or said anything?
“It doesn’t matter what you offer,” the Director of Pamphlets says, laughing. “It doesn’t matter what you say, as long as they take a pamphlet.”
Here I am, here to knock on your door. Please take a pamphlet, and please that’s all. The Director says I should always say please. “It increases the chances of pamphlet distribution, tenfold,” she says.
Please can I trouble you for a moment of your time, folded as it is, compressed as your weeks are, like a pamphlet of weeks? Can I tell you a bit about what we do? Can I tell you a noise complaint from next door? Can I tell you your future? In your future, you’ll hold a pamphlet. Can I fold the pamphlet into an accordion and play you a song? Can I fold it into a fan and fan your face? Can I put it in your pocket when you aren’t looking, then put your pocket in the wash, dampen the pamphlet into grainy mulch, then reconstitute the pamphlet with a set of tweezers? Do you want to buy some cookies? Well, don’t we all.
First, how many people live in your home, and would you like to support our cause? Will you buy some citrus fruit? Will you study our research? Will you consider the numbers? Will you continue to ignore the facts? When will you take a stand? Why don’t you take a seat? Would you care for some literature?
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