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Leaving The Office

Contributed by Dan Lester on 15/09/08

Reynolds woke up at around 8:30. He could hear the sound of dayshift people coming into the office, and the night workers preparing to leave. He got up from the floor, pulled on his shirt and tie, and discreetly made his way out of the storage room.

When he stepped out into the office the bright lights hurt his eyes. He squinted and looked down at his scuffed leather shoes, and the ‘intelligent simulation’ carpet. That was something that had confused him when he started working there. Surely a real carpet would have been cheaper?

This section was all open plan, so there were no cubicles, just a seemingly endless array of desks. This was one of the call centre departments, and all around people were logging into their workstations and putting on headsets. Reynolds made his way to the small kitchen area and checked the fridge. Four people had left lunches inside, three sandwiches and a tub of what appeared to be pasta salad. He rubbed his chin with his right hand, felt the growth that had gone past stubble to become a full beard, and picked up one of the sandwiches. So far he had been fairly lucky with sandwiches, but there was always a risk that he might end up with tuna. He straightened up, holding the sandwich in his left hand, out of sight of the workers, and started walking across the floor. After a couple of minutes he unwrapped the sandwich and started eating. It was tuna this time, but he was so hungry he didn’t care.

After two hours of walking Reynolds noticed that the employees he was passing were no longer wearing headsets. It occurred to him that he had passed through the call centre section. Not that it mattered. The important thing was getting to the main exit. Already he had passed six teleportation units, each one causing him to pause briefly while he stared at it longingly, before continuing his walk. If he had been able to access one of them he would have been out of the building within a matter of minutes. As it was he had been walking for…six, seven days? He had lost track by this point. It didn’t help that the building was operational 24/7.

Eventually he got tired of walking and decided to take a break. There was another kitchen area nearby. He retrieved a can of supermarket brand cola from the fridge and sat down at an unoccupied workstation. He logged in with an admin password that he had picked up three days before then looked around. Everyone in the area seemed to be doing work with spreadsheets, so he did the same. The staff turnover there was so high that he could sit down anywhere and people assumed he was either new or had transferred from another department.

He was just finishing the drink, and filling up a spreadsheet with every dirty word he could think of, when one of the managers walked up and called everyone over for a ‘team briefing.’ Reynolds huddled up with the others and listened. First there were performance figures for the previous week, and a couple of changes to procedures. Then the manager said that there was something important. “I’ve just been advised by HR that there may be someone in the building whose employment status has been revoked. How they got back in without clearance we don’t know, but if you see anyone suspicious please tell me or one of the other managers immediately. Okay guys, that’s all. Back to work.”

Reynolds had planned to resume walking after finishing his drink, but after an announcement like that, to suddenly get up and walk away might seem suspicious. He waited for some of the others to go on their break, and then started walking with them, continuing straight on when they turned to enter a teleportation unit, each one pressing their hand against the fingerprint scanner before being allowed in by the security guards.

It can’t be much further, he told himself. If I don’t get to the door today I’ll probably reach it tomorrow. Or the day after at the latest. He wasn’t sure if he believed that, having no idea how big the building actually was, but he was too tired to think about it too much. Instead he tried to push the doubt out of his mind, and kept on walking.