Getting Back Read Free Page B

Then she glanced sourly around his cubicle. "And your discipline." Every other employee on Level 31 had adhered to the request to maintain an "orderly and respectful desktop decor" in line with corporate atmospheric guidelines. Dyson's, however, was a pocket of cluttered individuality: pictures of climbers on Everest and camels in the Sahara, bearded revolutionaries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, two tattered pinups discreetly draped with Microcore calendars, a meditatively chewed plastic stegosaurus, several holo-movie figurines, parts from a magic kit, food wrappers, stained cups, and a Cuddle Doll with a noose around its neck.
    "I was just straightening up."
    Her stare was not amused. "Cultivate conformity, Mr. Dyson."
    He tried to look solemn. "We all aspire to be like you, Ms. Lundeen."
    She held up the chocolate. "You could do worse." She put it into her mouth and repeated a habitual warning as she chewed. "If you can't adapt to Microcore, you may end up in a place even less to your liking."
    It was an empty threat, he knew. Employees were like barnacles: you could hardly pry them loose with a stick of dynamite. "That's hard to imagine," he said.
    "So is your promotion." Daniel's poem fluttered into the wastebasket.
    Sanford came around the cubicle wall to fish it out. "Will you 'gongo'?" he read.
    Daniel shrugged. "I needed a rhyme."
    His colleague shook his head. "You're never going to bongo Mona Pietri with lame stuff like 'gongo,' Che." The nickname was taken from one of Daniel's revolutionary pictures. "Why don't you try being normal instead?"
    "Because I'm not," Daniel replied.
     
***
     
    He went for a Mongo by himself. Lights brightened and then dimmed in what was marketed as an "architectural warmth cocoon" as he walked down the pyramid's corridors, the bubble of light making him feel on stage instead of cozy. A soft female voice activated in the walls as he strode, reminding him of corporate philosophy. "You are your group," she murmured seductively as he passed the copier room.
    "Profit makes possibility," she reminded near the Telecom pod.
    Daniel took the stairs instead of the elevator. "Work for a good retirement," she whispered as he trotted down the steps.
    Her voice followed him to the hallway, the rest room, the cafeteria line.
    "Share the enthusiasm."
    "Change is risky."
    "Believe in belonging."
    The voice was as unheard, and omnipresent, as the shadow-Muzak it interrupted. It cajoled, nagged, promised.
    The cafeteria chatter was of web celebrities, game scores, designer drugs, faddish restaurants, and clone-organ operations. An accountant's bray of laughter was so obnoxious that Daniel thought the donkey should clone himself a new head. Then he sat alone, sipping his sour drink and imagining improvements to his catapult. "I hear you're seducing harridan Lundeen," someone called from across the room.
    Daniel ignored the comment, stacking sugar tablets into a castle wall. Someday he wanted to defend a real castle.
    Sanford came through the line and slid into a seat opposite. "The gorgon won again," he judged.
    "I don't care what that old biddy thinks." Dyson sipped his Mongo, wincing at its taste. They said it was an acquired habit.
    "It ain't what she thinks, it's what she can do. She called maintenance to do some midday cleaning."
    "So?"
    "Your wastebasket is empty now."
    The catapult! "Shit. I thought she hadn't noticed it."
    "When are you going to learn, Dyson? Go along to get along."
    "I try to get along. It's not my fault everyone but me is crazy." He sipped again. It was possible he was the only real human being on earth, he'd theorized, and everyone else was a participant in an elaborate hoax to fool him, for unknown but no doubt evil and nefarious reasons. This could explain why everyone else seemed to tolerate a bureaucracy that drove him crazy. "The catapult actually worked rather well, I thought. The problem was the payload."
    Sanford resisted any temptation to congratulate his