As she left the conference room, all Gina allowed herself to think was that the office smelled of peppermint and pine. She slunk back to her cube, glad it was tucked into the corner. “Too many errors,” she thought, logging back onto her computer, “Not good enough.” Taking a deep breath in through her nose, she visualized a tree with a candy-striped trunk.
“The Holiday Party is starting,” Mayra called out. From Gina’s perspective, she looked like a disembodied head framed in grey curls, floating above the cubical wall.
Gina slid down in her chair as Mayra’s shoes clicked across the floor, a flurry of managers shuffling behind with their notepads and tablets. Gina watched them, her eyes drawn as always to Dalton, who moved with a peculiar march-step.
“He’s a cyborg, you know.”
The voice made Gina jump.
“Like in a legal sense, like fifty-plus-one percent robot,” Jaime dropped a stack of envelopes on Gina’s desk, “Can you mail these to my client list?”
Gina flipped through the blank envelopes, “Yeah.”
“You joining the party?”
Gina’s screen looked hazy. She blinked, then clicked on Jaime’s client list, “No, I’m too far behind.”
“Hmm, that’s too bad,” Jaime’s narrow lips twitched, “I’ve heard Dalton is a sloppy drunk.”
“‘Cause that sounds so appealing,” Gina hit the print button, then realized she hadn’t loaded label paper, “Crap. Anyway, who gets drunk at office parties?”
Jaime’s smirk blossomed into a grin, “That bothers you more than the fact he’s a bot? Think about it, Gina, nothing below the belt.”
“That’s - you know what? I don’t even want to talk to you,” Gina stood, her chair popping up beneath her with a squeak. She stomped through the cubes, rounding the corner and coming face-to-face with Dalton himself.
“Gina,” he nodded at her, “I was just getting a box of tissues.”
She stared at him, the words “fifty-plus-one” riding unbidden in her mind. What percent accounted for the way his hair curled at the back of his neck? The hint of steel in his eyes? Was it a trick of robotics that made him remind her of rabbits? “They’re in the second cabinet,” she opened it.
“Thanks,” he picked up a box.
“Just doing my job.”
“I wasn’t talking about the tissues,” Dalton brushed past her, and for a moment she could smell it; the acrid scent of burnt plastic.
::::::::::::::::::
It was none of her business, she told herself as she opened the Personnel folder. Her mouse tripped over the files, stopping at Robertson, Jennifer. She clicked on the file, entering her username and password. An email popped up in the corner of her screen and she copied the code from it to the authentication box. Saving Jennifer’s updated license, she closed the folder.
A moment later, she had opened it again, her eyes feverishly scanning the list of names. He wasn’t there. She went up a level, her mouse hovering over the Office Equipment folder. “I’m being silly,” she thought, double-clicking the file. She clicked Robotics before she could change her mind, poring over the contents before slumping in her seat with a sigh.
“Gina? What are you working on?” Mayra approached her from the side.
“Personnel filing,” Gina closed the Robotics file.
“You’re in the wrong folder,” Mayra’s eyebrows straightened into stiff lines of concern, “I know I may not always do a good job of recognizing my employees, but I don’t think of them as Office Equipment.”
Gina smiled, then thought better of it and ironed her face into neutrality, “Is there something I can do for you?”
“I’m updating a lease and the terms are changing. If you could take this,” she handed Gina a tablet, “and make the updates and send it - to me, not to the client.”
“Okay.”
“And make the changes everywhere in the document,” Mayra walked back towards her office, then turned, “Oh, and call Alex and make sure his address is up-to-date.”
Gina looked at the tablet; it was a lease renewal for Dalton. For a moment, she was struck with screen-blindness; the whiteness of the tablet obliterating the words. Then her vision cleared and she lifted the phone handset.
“Alex Krupke.”
“How dare you,” Gina kept her voice low.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re selling a person. Do you ever think how that could have been you?”
“Who is this?”
“Let’s just say I’m your conscious since you obviously don’t have one.”
“Look here, Miss, I could call Mayra right now and get you fired,” Alex hissed into the receiver, “There’s a lot of things you don’t know, and it’s none of your business.”
“Someone being exploited, being kept as a slave? That’s not my business?”
A hand reached down, index finger depressing the hook switch. “Come with me,” Jaime ordered. He marched Gina into the kitchen. A plate of sugar cookies in the shape of reindeer sat next to a bowl of peppermints. Jamie poured a cup of coffee and set it in front of Gina. “Drink,” he commanded.
“But . . .” Now that her anger had worn off, Gina was starting to shake.
“Just drink it, trust me,” Jamie slid onto a stool across from her. Reluctantly, Gina sat, sipping the coffee. Jaime’s face was inscrutable, his eyes so brown that she could barely see his pupils. “Do you know how I got this job?” he leaned his elbows on the counter, cookie crumbs sticking to his shirt sleeves, “I knew someone who worked here, namely, I knew Dalton, grew up with him, really.”
Gina choked, hot coffee burning down her throat, “What?”
“I knew him before the accident. Well, sort of. We weren’t friends, but we went to the same school,” Jaime picked up a cookie, turning it over and looking at the back, “It was a head-on collision. His mom and older brother were killed. Dalton was crushed from the sternum down, the pressure of the car keeping him alive.” Jaime put the cookie back on the plate, “Back then, there were no laws around what you could or couldn’t do to keep someone alive. Alex had already lost his wife and a son, so . . . I’m not gonna lie, the technology was pretty awful back then. Dalton was in this chair thing that hummed and beeped like you knew where his body stopped and the machine began.”
“Stop,” Gina echoed.
“No, drink your coffee,” Jaime loosened the knot in his tie, “Just my luck, I end up in class behind him. Couldn’t hear a damn thing the teacher said. One day she calls on me, and I couldn’t answer the question. Everyone laughed at me and I kind of lost it. I said some things I’m not proud of. Basically, I called him a monstrosity.” Jaime’s face became more angular as he cringed, “It’s one of those things I don’t like to tell people about myself, but you need to hear this.”
“I would never -”
Jaime shushed her. “You think you’re better, but you’re guilty of the same thing: you’re only thinking about yourself. Do you even remember what I said Dalton’s father’s name was?”
“No,” Gina fidgeted with the coffee cup, “but I would never call Dalton that.”
“Yeah, yeah, you have a crush on your idea of him.”
Gina stood, “That’s enough.”
“His father's name is Alex Krupke, you know, the guy you were chewing out for representing Dalton.”
“Oh my God,” Gina crumpled back onto the stool, sagging against the counter, “I didn’t realize.”
“No, you just assumed, and we all know what assumptions do.”
Gina stared at up at her coffee cup. From this angle, it looked massive, Jaime only half its size. “He’ll never forgive me.”
“Well, maybe not. He forgave me, but that was only after the hearing aids,” Jaime tapped his right ear.
Gina sat up, “I need to go talk to Mayra. I might get fired, but I guess I deserve it.” Gina slid off the stool and turned towards the office.
“I wasn’t suggesting that,” Jaime followed her, dusting cookie crumbs off his shirt.
They were midway across the office when Dalton popped up from his cube like a mole in a carnival whack ‘em game. “Gina,” his face was grim, “We need to talk.”
::::::::::::
Nothing good ever started with “We need to talk,” but in an odd way, Gina was relieved. Dalton put thought into the outcome of his words, where Mayra only viewed speech as an argument she was determined to win.
He sat across the conference room table, his hands folded neatly, “My dad said someone called him from the office.”
“I’m sorry. I did something really stupid,” Gina looked at the table.
“He wanted to know who you were and why you were so interested in me. I didn’t know, so I thought I’d ask you. Why are you so interested in me?”
Gina glanced up at him, images of bunnies filling her head with their soft fur and quivering noses. “I kind of, maybe find you attractive and you seem nice. You say funny things, but you’re kind. You’re intelligent and dedicated to your work, and I really need to stop talking,” Gina sucked in her bottom lip.
“I wondered if it was something like that,” Dalton’s mouth twitched into a smile, “I’m currently seeing someone, but I’m flattered.”
As Gina returned to her desk, she focused on the scent of candy canes and pine. Again, the candy-striped tree appeared in her head, its boughs budding and blossoming into marzipan pine cones. “He smiled,” she thought, logging on to her computer, “He said he was flattered.” Gina looked at the lease, it was time to get back to work.
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Well, it's a new year, and what better way to kick it off than with a romance that happens in a dystopian future?
Last year around this time, I cleaned out all my drafts and melded them into one very convoluted blog entry. So now you have something confusing to look forward to. Hopefully, with the chickens back in school, I can get back to writing on a more regular basis.