Synergeist: The Haunted Cubicle Read Free Page A

choose. When she thought about the twin songs, the Blazing Star of creative drive and Black Hole of recycled art supplies, the music swelled. Were these objects the only possible source of energy? Would they eventually be depleted? She reached out to touch the power flowing through the wires in the floor. It tasted (really? tasted?) nasty and was not energizing. As she contemplated the flow of energy, she noticed a trickle of another kind coming through the opening of her cubicle from the window beyond.
    She cast her sense out in that direction, following the stream, and found that the sun was the source. The sun: a roiling, boiling ball, burning with the power of creation, fusing atoms together to form new atoms, devouring Hydrogen and creating Helium with the glorious byproduct of energy. She stared into the sun. There was another plus to being a ghost: gazing into the sun without being blinded. She saw the reaction and understood as no one had before. More than light and heat, more than modern physics comprehended, there was a living energy streaming out into the solar system. The fundamental stuff of creation poured forth, and in the background she heard the sun singing a pale reflection of Blazing Star’s song.
    The energy of her objects sustained her in their proximity, but the energy of the sun was different. Though slight, it was energy to be collected and stored. She felt power flowing into her like that first cup of coffee in the morning. She sat and basked, until the stream decreased and then stopped. The sun had risen to a point, and no longer shined on her spot through the window. She still saw the sun through the walls, but the building absorbed or blocked the flow of living energy. Perhaps she should pop outside during the day. After a short study, she saw the flux was greater beyond the walls but not strong enough to overcome the drain of being that far from her stuff.
    Sitting and waiting for tomorrow’s sunshine was boring. She wished for a way to make time pass quicker, and then it did. She entered that perceptual time dilation you sometimes experience when absorbed in something you love to do. Time flew. She didn’t realize it at first because so much in her view was static. People had become blurred streams of color like taillights in a time-lapse photo. They left the building, the sun set, the sun came up, and people began whizzing into the building, all in what seemed to be a few minutes.
    That was cool. She wondered if she could slow time as well. She watched Martin coming down the aisle toward his cubicle and thought about him slowing. Nothing happened. She called up memories of those moments when the tennis ball just seemed to hang there, waiting to be hit. He shifted into slow-mo; one foot hung in the air for a moment before descending. Could she go back and leave the goat cheese that led to her demise off the salad? She tried, but the best she managed was to slow everything until it almost appeared frozen but still moved forward.
    When she stopped to consider, it made sense. She suspected that what she was controlling was her own perception of time and not time itself. A personal fast forward and slow motion function would be a most effective way to skip the tedious and savor the interesting.
    Two auras she did not recognize came down the aisle to the opening of her cubicle. They startled her when they stopped, turned, and entered her workspace. Taken aback, she froze in place. They moved in to either side of her chair and dropped a box on it. The box forced her out of the chair. As this occurred, the intruder moved to stand where she had been pushed.
    They didn’t displace her as the box had. It didn’t hurt as passing into the cubicle wall had. She registered a sensation, but it was not pain. She sensed a disturbance in the person’s aura as though they were aware of the contact as well. Reflexively, she moved under the desk to hide. They were still for a moment and then began taking things