Work Text:
<Yi Sang?>
“Mmh?”
I turn my head to once again face my manager. Their hand extended slightly with some sign of concern. I am in their office for our regular consultation, pushed forward by some days in response to the recent occurrence. My body is in their office but I do not find my head to always be in that same office. I am distracted. Distracted by the simple pleasure of watching motes of dust drift through the beam of the projector. They outline the shape of the light as it grows from the size of a pocket square to the size of a bedding sheet upon the wall.
It is a simple and visceral pleasure. I cannot help but be entranced by it. Following my gaze, my manager must make the assumption that the projector upsets me- perhaps something it projects might be upsetting. But I am not looking at anything but dust drifting through the lamplight. They switch off the projector. Denying my pleasure, presuming to be giving me relief. I am a little saddened, but return my head to the office with the rest of me.
<Do you maybe want to talk about some of the things that happened to you while you were in Hermann’s lab?>
This was about the recent occurrence. While engaged in some trifling contract, we, that is to say, myself and my fellows who share my lot, came across some mirrors stolen brashly from The Ring. I happened to catch my reflection in one of them. But reflected in that mirror was a me I did not recognize. I stared into that mirror for a long, long time. I remember having to be pulled away from it. The entire walk back to the bus, my skin itched terribly. It was as if I were suddenly covered in bug bites. When I scratched to the point of bleeding, my manager pushed my regular consultation forward by some days.
The question still lingered heavily in the air. It did not care for my attempts to avoid it. “It is a topic that does occupy my thinking from time to time, Dante.”
I thought very hard on my next line of speaking. But I could not form an ordered line of thinking on it. I said as such.
“My thoughts swim idle and slippery. I do not know how I might speak them.”
My manager nodded slowly, as if in understanding. Were there any that understood me? Was I to be so easily understood? I did not presume to be complex enough to elude understanding. In the end I was a simple, lazy creature. Do not be deceived by my apparent intellect. But I failed to be understood often despite my own efforts. This was a failure of my own, I thought. A failure to be a creature of society. I did not mind, though it was sometimes troublesome.
<Do you maybe want to write them down?> They gestured to the notebook I kept on my person. I did indeed on occasion write down the occasional trifling. Poems and formulas. A small shred of understanding.
“Perhaps I shall try.”
<Good!> My manager fanned their hands. It was the gesture of one pleased with a puppy for performing a simple trick. <Try to have something for next week, okay?>
I nodded. I apologized for nothing at all. Goodbye. Finally, I returned to my room. My room was my prison. Dante, in a way, confined me at all times. I did not mind, except for the room. It was not suited to my tastes. It was too bright, and cold. As if created specifically to be unpleasant to me. Perhaps it was. But the small cot in the corner provided some comfort. Removing my outerwear, I wriggled beneath the covers. The familiar warmth welcomed me. Dragging my clothes overtop to block out yet more of the light, I reflected on those unfortunate years of my life.
I thought first about my room. The lab was too cold and bright. But my small bedroom beside it was perfectly dusky. The temperature was perfect. A sliding door partitioned it from the lab. During the day I worked there beneath electric lights. Mirrors reflected the faces of other worlds. I perfected lenses of glittering glass. Simple pleasurable work done for an ignoble cause. I thought that I must not be so noble, as I did it without knowing why I did. I slept when I pleased and I worked when I pleased. The rations were dreadful. I did not know when it was day and when it was night. I grew not to mind.
I kept my time by the movements of my supervisor. At a time I decided was evening each day, Gubo would bring guests into the lab. I had to stay in my room when he did. I could not be seen by Gubo’s guests. But through the sliding door I could hear them. They spoke of many things. They spoke of my work as if I were not there. Sometimes they spoke of crude topics and made crude jokes. I did not appreciate this. But when I tried to sleep through these meetings I found that I could not. So I listened every time. The guests who were kind and soft-spoken I appreciated.
Each time Gubo left with one of his guests he would leave behind a datasheet. I do not know why he did this. The information on these datasheets was useless to me. I lived a simple life. I adjusted the parameters of lenses. I had no use for them. I did not appreciate my supervisor asking me to catalog data that was beyond my simple existence. When I began throwing the paper in the toilet in protest, a locked filing cabinet appeared in the lab. I heard it open and close each time Gubo left the laboratory. I was a little saddened. I did not realize how much pleasure crumpling up those sheets of numbers and throwing them to my bed or into the toilet brought me before.
I began to grow curious about the world beyond my two rooms. What brought my supervisor and his guest such excitement? Why did they speak so much on so many topics? I did not have the will to escape. But the impulse to understand overtook me. The filing cabinet was left unlocked one day. I took a stack of datasheets to use as my cover and found the laboratory door unlocked. Beyond was a hallway of eighteen doors. Beyond that a sprawling facility. I wandered through it aimlessly for some time. When I returned, Gubo was displeased to see me. His guest was upset at my appearance. I went to my room. I apologized profusely. I should not have gone out.
My movements would now be even further restricted. Or so I thought. But my supervisor instead encouraged me. He gave me money to spend on the vending machines I found throughout the halls. I do not know why he did this. I was a prisoner in every way. Perhaps he thought it might improve my constitution. I found a cafeteria beside a transportation hub and resolved to go there every day. The clock on the wall ensured that I would never return before Gubo and his guest had left. My dreadful life had improved somewhat. But it would not last.
The cafeteria had closed early. The hallways were blaring with amber lights. People scrambled to and fro at the emergency. They were like pedestrians in the rain without umbrellas. I sauntered carelessly through the halls. Whatever it was would surely not affect my meager existence. What I encountered in this lax state I can not remember. Only the feeling of reality shattering into a thousand pieces. Light scattered outward in a rainbow’s ark. Everything and nothing. I do not remember much after that. A period of deathly sleep. Recovery of some sort. Four pills per day. My face in the mirror. Gubo’s biting words at my leaving. Walking through the rain.
Our time at K Corp helped me remember it some. But I still could not grasp it. But perhaps I had remembered enough. Enough that I might sufficiently express myself to my manager. Dante meant well. I writhed in my bed until I could grasp my notebook and pen. I placed the ink-soaked ball upon the page. But I could not move it. No matter how I tried it would not move. Dante was wrong. Dante meant well. But written or spoken made no difference. For whatever reason, I could not bring myself to speak on the topic. It was as if it caused my tongue and fingers to swell, an allergy to clear and common communication.
I could not bring myself to disappoint Dante. Failing to provide what was asked would provide no escape, anyway. They would merely ask me to speak on another unspeakable topic. I did not know what afflicted me. Why could I not simply speak as others spoke? What prevented it? My own failure alone, I knew. A man twenty seven years of age. The experiences of K Corp opened me to connections with others once more. Only to find once more that they were listless. I did not feel upset at my self. Nor at my past. But I could not speak it.
I cried a little in bed. But then I remembered that feeling of understanding. That pleasure. It had been felt when Dante pointed to my notebook. I flipped idly through the pages and found no clear communication. Poetry and formulas. Perhaps the literal world was beyond my grasp. But I might find my ease in metaphor. So I began to write.
I counterfeit myself in many ways. Datasheets to shining silver coins, white coats to black corduroy. The laboratory a house of pleasure. A shattering of reality instead a simple rain-soaked fever. Aspirins and Adalines. My mind was set upon its path. I wrote like a madman. Each hour I did not write I dreamed. I drifted through life for a week unawares. So caught up in my own head that on one of our missions I did not notice the building catching fire around us.
In a week I was finished. It was time for my consultation. I dropped a stack of twenty-something pages upon my manager’s desk. They were pleased. They clapped and cheered. I did not mind it. They got to reading. The projector was switched off this time, so to occupy my thoughts I watched the ceiling fan spin lazily upon its axel. Dust circulated the room at all times. Trapped but moving. As if writing pleasurably.
<Uhm, Yi Sang…>
“Yes, Dante?”
<Sorry, but… didn’t I ask you to write about your experience at the lab? This… I’m not really…> They scratched their metal head.
“It is…” I felt a sense of despair. A feeling of ennui swept over me. I had tried and I had failed. This was my own fault. No matter how I tried, I simply could not be a social creature. I stared at my manager’s face. The ticking hands of their expression seemed to symbolize my destiny. Whiling away the hours idly. Waiting for that fated midnight. Each day I looked at those hands. Looking to see if midnight would come any sooner. They rarely moved.
I sighed. “It is only a whim.” I took back the stack of pages. I was not lying, really. Memories were only a whim, and what use did I have for them? “Apologies for troubling you, Dante. I know not what came over me.”
<Oh no, it’s okay, really! I’m happy to see you, uhm, expressing yourself. Was there something else you wanted to talk about? Did you… used to have a wife? Do you want to talk about her?>
The consultation concluded shortly after. Goodbye. I stepped out into the hall. I was disappointed. There was a heaviness to my step. But not much more than usual. For all that connected us, perhaps Dante and I would forever be out of step. Perhaps we would never truly match each other’s stride. I would stay with them nonetheless. I would appreciate their attempts to help me. But I was a loathsome beast beyond saving.
I made my way to my wretched room. In the hall I passed Ryōshū. When she spied my stack of papers, she stopped me with a needless show of violence.
“Poet.” Her face bore a sneer. “W.I.T.?”
What is that, I surmised. Perhaps here was a kindred spirit. Another who struggled to be understood.
“A fleeting creation. You may read it if you please.”
She snatched my story from my grasp. We stood in the hallway for many minutes as she read it through with narrowed eyes. Her expression was grim. Only once near the end did she utter a small chuckle. The pages were shoved ignominiously back at me when she had finished.
“T.A.D.”
Trite and dull.
“The real story is so much more exciting than this. You’ve made it boring. Why take out all the R.A.D. parts? Tch, modernists…” She took a cigarette from her pocket and stepped around me. She continued on her way.
It was as if I only existed as half of me. Only half in each person’s life. Dante loved me. But they did not understand me. Ryōshū understood me. But she did not love me. Faust did neither but appreciated me for my utility. I could never attain the whole of any human relationship. I was like a phantasm drifting half-seen through the hallways. As if each person close to me was my widow, only able to faintly remember half of what I had once been. Was it improper of me to imagine each person close to me as my widow? Pardon.
Something nagged at me regardless. I turned.
“Ryōshū. A moment, if you would.”
She turned. “Y.S.”
“Indeed, that is I.”
“No, I mean- Yes. Speak.”
“There was a moment in your reading that made you chuckle, unless I am mistaken. Tell me, what brought you this fleeting joy?”
The flame of her lighter briefly dazzled me. The scent of nicotine filled my lungs.
“I liked the part where she bit you randomly all over.”