Synergeist: The Haunted Cubicle

by Daniel M. Strickland

  He wasn’t at his desk, so swooning over him did not offer the convenient diversion she hoped. She decided to find out if other living things had an aura, or if humans were unique. Kim of the loud and endless personal calls had a sad little philodendron on her bookcase. She cast her magical gaze on it. The plant had an aura, much simpler than a person’s, bound to the plant with the same binding she noticed in the sleeper at the hospital. Why not? She flashed over to the plant, touched it, and knew what it was to be this plant: the simple imperative to draw moisture, to soak in the sun’s rays, and to reproduce. The plant was thirsty, hungry and horny. Not sad, anxious, or bored. There was no sense of past choices made or future choices possible as there was with people, only simple being.

  She chose a single leaf, memorizing the location and qualities of each bond between the leaf and its aura. With a small amount of her cache of energy, she canceled out the all the connections, withdrew and watched. The aura lost its normal precise synchronization with the leaf, expanded, wavered, and then snapped back into place, reforming the bonds. Apparently separating the two was not a simple as that. Perhaps she needed to disconnect the whole thing. She didn’t want to kill the plant, but it was just a sad little heartleaf that Kim was slowly killing anyway. As it turned out, there was no need to worry; the whole aura reattached itself as well when she severed the bindings. If she separated the two and pulled them further apart for a period, perhaps that would do it. But she didn’t have any notion of how to do that and didn’t want to use any more energy anyway. She was saving up for her next message to Martin.

  Millie returned to the sweet spot in her cubicle and pondered. She studied the perfect memory of the connections between the body and the soul she had observed. She was no physicist, but she had keen powers of observation born of her thousands of hours of drawing from life. The bonds were not the same as any of the four fundamental forces she saw everywhere around her. That didn’t surprise her; the Standard Model was known to be incomplete. Only recently had they confirmed the existence of the Higgs field, which permeated the entire universe and imparted mass on any particle that interacted with it. Maybe this was the so-called Dark Energy or the carrier for the “spooky action at a distance” known as quantum entanglement. She found physics interesting, the principle that the act of observation disturbs the observed and all that, but she knew she had a superficial understanding. She didn’t have the knowledge or brainpower to work through this theory. So she went back to something she knew she was good at, observation.

  Studying items in her cubicle, she detected the energy of this fifth force, flowing both into and out of her things in the box, like a magnetic field in which the positive and negative poles were the same point. She had seen it before of course, but she had not noticed it. She didn’t want to call it the Life Force. That was corny and not quite right. This was the force of creation, the force that was the byproduct of creation, the force that bound the physical self to the soul, allowed the disassociated soul to stay in the physical world. And who knew what else? Since no one argued the point, she decided to call it the Millie Force.

  She studied the Millie Force in the sun’s rays, somehow piggy backing the regular photons. The guys at the Large Hadron Collider would love this. What use was this information? She had no idea, but more information was always a good thing. Well, almost always. She recalled when a friend in High School decided to share every detail of her first sexual encounter. TMI.

  She had had enough Mr. Wizard stuff for the moment, so she glanced across the room and saw that Martin was back at his desk. She watched him for a while, her thoughts wandering here and there as the afternoon continued. Martin pecked away at his computer, but something was making him anxious. Then late in the day he suddenly became even more distressed from reading something on his computer. She studied the screen trying to read it. In her Millie Vision, everything was made of layers of energy lattices in an infinite spectrum of colors, but the flat panel monitor was even worse than most things. After fine-tuning her focus to just the layer of liquid crystals, she could make out what was on the screen amid a desktop color theme beyond imagination.

  What had upset Martin was an invitation to a mandatory conference call on Monday. Millie understood why that upset Martin, but once you’re dead, getting laid off seemed trivial. She wanted to comfort him, but she didn’t have a way to do that yet. She didn’t have enough energy for a physical message at the moment. Besides, a brief note in toner dust or hole punch chads would probably not make him feel better.

  Chin up.

  Could be worse.

  Could be dead.

  Love, Millie

  Nope. She debated trying to touch him, to see if she could somehow communicate more directly that way. But maybe it would just freak him out. Their earlier touches had been short and superficial, like the brush of a hand on a thigh. She wanted to hold him in her arms, a much more intimate contact. While this familiar debate raged within her, Martin got up and headed for the door. She considered following him, but she hesitated. She took her indecision as a sign that the time was not right. Or she chickened out. She was not sure which.

  Reading a computer screen was an exciting development. To distract herself from the pain of her latest indecision, she cast about until she found someone using the computer. Most had already left for the day. TGIF! But there were a few poor souls still at their desks pounding away. She read their screens as well. One played solitaire. Probably waiting for the boss to leave.

  She had learned to duplicate buttons on the copier. Why not learn the keys of the keyboard as well? Were different computers different? She didn’t know if there were standards, but she figured there must be, otherwise mice and keyboards wouldn’t be interchangeable. She watched each of the last few people as they typed and used the mouse. Memories of using her keyboard provided a map. She recorded the corresponding minute electrical surge from each keystroke and the elements of mouse clicks and movements in her perfect memory. She had most of the keys mapped in her mind by the time everyone left. With great excitement, she looked at her computer and contemplated sending Martin a message. With dismay, she realized she didn’t know the power button.

  Not being able to start up her computer and try it out was disappointing, but she knew it wouldn’t take long to catch someone starting up their machine. In the meantime she needed something else to occupy her until someone came back into the office. She could fast forward until someone came in, but then she recalled her project to spot another ghost. Might as well do something else useful, at least until morning.

  She remembered the precise location of the hospital emergency room now, so she didn’t have to follow the roads like before. Her Millie Vision zipped to the waiting room. There wasn’t much going on, but it was early. She looked around through the hospital but didn’t see anything that looked promising. Six people were in the ER, but none of them in danger of dying. The patients appreciated that, but it meant her vigil might take a while. She felt so Goth, waiting for a chance to witness death.

  She shifted back to a broad view of the emergency room and waited. She thought about her omnipotent vision as she watched. It couldn’t be anything like human eyesight. Since she wasn’t physically, (or rather spiritually) in the room, she was not interpreting photons of light striking ectoplasmic eyes. She had viewed the depths of space. She saw subatomic bonds, which, if she understood these things, could never be seen directly by the human eye. This had to be something else altogether.

  She recalled quantum theories that supposed (or perhaps concluded) that all points in the universe were connected to every other. Perhaps these connections were all part of the Collective Consciousness her Yogi spoke of, and she somehow tapped into this network and was able to interpret a view of anything using it. If that was the case, she should not be limited to views in a direct line from herself. It seemed to her that everything she had viewed had been in a straight line. Maybe because it didn’t occur to her that her view co
uld be otherwise, a preconceived notion left over from the land of the living.

  To test the theory she rotated her view all the way around the walls of the room, then to looking down from the ceiling, and then to all sorts of odd perspectives. It was amusing for a while, but like the MySpace Angles fad, it got old. Theory proven, she picked a vantage point that had a good view of the room and waited. Waiting at the doctor’s office. She imagined Doctor McSteamy coming out of the back, clipboard in hand.

  Who’s next? What seems to be the problem young lady? Dead? When did this “being dead” start? Do you have insurance? No, not health insurance ma’am, life insurance.

  Ha! Things were slow, so she speeded them up. The sun went down and the ER got busier as the evening wore on, but no one died. A man staggered in holding something against his head. She snapped back to normal objective time. His aura reeked of a pollution she understood to be alcohol. He reeled his way toward the doors leading back into the treatment rooms. The security guard stopped him and had a heated exchange with him.

  She wished she could hear what they were saying. She saw the waves of sound energy, but she had no way to interpret them. The drunk gave up, plopped in the chair closest to the admitting nurse, and glared at her, radiating his inebriation, impatience, and hostility. The miserable woman, waiting in the chair next to where he landed, glowed with disgust. She got up, made her way over to the water fountain, took a drink, and then made her way to a seat as far from the lush as possible. The guard kept a wary eye on him.

  She felt like the Grim Reaper, waiting for someone’s ultimate misfortune. A gurney pushed in through the doors, accompanied by three people. Before she could study them, another followed in behind it, accompanied by more people. What Millie assumed were two doctors, burst in through the other doors. They made their way to the first gurney, pushing other people aside. The doctors radiated excitement, anticipating an end to the tedious stitches and flu sufferers. The others that had accompanied the gurneys through the outer doors worried frantically. Some of them also blazed with suppressed rage. The two paramedics left quickly. They were relieved, perhaps that they had delivered their cargo alive and maybe, to be getting out of the messy drama without getting sucked into it.

  On one of the gurneys was a man as intoxicated as the obnoxious man glaring at the nurse. He was in both physical and emotional pain, but his aura looked strong and well bound to his body. The other was in distress. The aura resembled the sleeping man’s but even less active. She sensed in it a resignation, the connections to the body growing tenuous.

  The doctors focused on this patient as they wheeled both of them through the doors into the treatment area. The guard prevented their entourage from following. Like a trolley shot in one of those medical dramas, Millie’s view followed the distressed patient through the doors.

  Millie watched in both excitement and horror as the doctors and nurses worked to stabilize the patient. Watching the Millie Force ties that connected body and soul fade, she wished she could touch him, and somehow let him know it would be okay. Except she wasn’t sure she was okay.

  The bonds faded to nothing, and the ghost of the man began to drift upward. The doctors applied the defibrillator. She saw the body feebly grasping at the energy and using it. The spirit gave a startled jerk, glowed with panic, and then snapped back into place, but the connection was weak and again ebbed away.

  This time, nothing the doctors did reestablished the connection. The aura, shaped approximately like the man, floated lazily above. She also noted that a version of her Millie Field was forming around the body. This force bubble seemed to be exuded by the body, its final attempt to support the soul of the former occupant. The field was weak but grew slowly, building strength. The energy had a slightly different flavor than hers. Akin to fingerprints, she thought, similar yet unique. It would not support her. There would be no commandeering someone else’s nest. The notion was revolting anyway.

  She also noticed a connection much like the connection shared by entangled quantum particles between the field and the aura floating above. Once she saw the linkage, she saw others as well, leading off to different places. She supposed the spirit at some point chose a haunt and followed one of the tethers. She didn’t recall choosing her cubicle. Why would anyone choose a beige box as her home away from body? Maybe it was a matter of which was strongest and not a choice. Maybe the strength of the field determined the soul’s destination with no choice required.

  The newly formed shade was completely serene. She had never seen a person’s aura in this state. Even when they were asleep, there were pools of emotion, structures of subconscious thoughts, and waves of possibilities washing back and forth.

  This was different. There had been time between when she had died and when she had become aware. Perhaps this was an embryonic state before being born again. She didn’t know about continuous observation for days, but she was determined to observe as much as possible. The shade became more tenuous even as she watched, like granddad’s smoke rings drifting toward the ceiling.

  Just before becoming invisible, the whole thing collapsed to a point. At first she thought the soul had departed. Made the choice and adios. But no, the point persisted. The singularity was dimensionless. No height, width, or depth, but still there. She sensed it, or detected a presence in the connected network of everything, or whatever it was she did with her Millie Vision. The point was dimensionless, but it existed. She was looking at the concentrated essence of a human being. All the qualities of a living person’s aura, condensed into an unmeasurable dot.

  She wondered if she looked the same. Probably, but she hadn’t found anything in her reality that functioned as a mirror. Then she realized that given her new found understanding of the Millie Vision, all had she to do was to pick a vantage point and look at herself.

  While she debated whether she should continue to watch the baby ghost hatch or to grab a quick peek at herself back at the cubicle, something else drew her attention. While focused on the placid point that was once a man, she also saw through the walls back into the waiting room. Something new oozed through the outer wall and into the room.

  It drew her focus. This thing was not a quiet point of presence like the newly deceased spirit before her and not similar to any human aura she had ever witnessed. It passed through the wall, vomiting out huge, gaudy waves of radiation with foul frequencies and corrupt wavelengths. This eruption spewed out somewhere other than the three dimensional space of human existence, but Millie sensed it in the same way she could sense the presence in a dimensionless point.

  Even after coming through the wall, it continued to throw off showers of sparks like a Roman candle into this other plane. The thing expended staggering amounts of energy to stay outside of its Millie Field, if it even had one. Within the singularity she saw that it was ancient, the experiences and decisions piled up in its being led off into the distant past. Little of this resembled human experience, but she sensed that once, in the distant past, it was a man. There was the insatiable desire to feed, to accumulate power, and a raging ocean of stored energy that dwarfed her little pool. If the beast made a sound it would be an unearthly howl, and its smell of sulfur and putrid meat.

  Startled, her first instinct was to run. Her vision snapped back to her cubical. But the thing couldn’t hurt her from a distance, could it? She didn’t think so. Curiosity overcame fear, and she shifted her focus back to the ER. The people in the room were as unaware of the presence as they were of her spying on them.

  The thing meandered around the room. At first its course appeared random, but then it seemed to be snaking toward the miserable woman who had earlier moved as far as possible from the belligerent drunk. She wanted to tell the woman to run. She didn’t know what would happen when the thing reached her, certainly nothing good.

  It stopped just before it reached her. Without any fanfare the singularity expanded in three dimensions, becoming a swirling mass of Millie Force in roughly the shap
e of a human aura. A tendril approximating a human arm formed and touched the woman’s forehead with the tip. The woman jerked slightly as though mildly startled by something. Then the thing began to feed.

  The beast drew the Millie Force from the woman, the bonds between body and soul weakening. Like a vacuum cleaner hose it sucked energy down the tendril. The force formed a swirling vortex around the singularity in its center before being absorbed into the thing’s vast collection bin. The hungry monster’s aura began to glow with energies besides the Millie Force. It extracted energies from the woman that it didn’t store as well. These superfluous electrical and magnetic energies built up on the surface of the shade, attracting dust and moisture from the room. Millie could clearly see the matter beginning to collect on the surface, outlining a vaguely human shape. She wondered when the people in the room would be able to see the apparition.

  The miserable woman’s body began to resist, calling up its own reserves of energy in defense, creating what resembled a Millie Field between her and the phantom like quantum antibodies. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. The heat energy of her body dropped. Her aura however, flared like a supernova, her discomfort ratcheting up the scale. The barrier became strong enough to stop the flow. Withdrawing the vacuum hose from the woman’s forehead, the gluttonous ghost moved away.

  The miserable woman tumbled forward out of her chair onto the floor. The admitting nurse noticed and picked up a phone. Others in the room glanced her way but went back to whatever they were doing, pretending not to notice.

  The boozer with the head laceration was next. Upon the creature’s touch, his barely restrained impatience and hostility exploded in wild, violent, indescribable colors throughout his aura. He leapt up and staggered headlong for the doors that lead back into the treatment area. The thing tagged along with him, finishing its draft as they moved. The security guard met the lush (unaware of his companion) and became the next victim of the life force vampire. His tolerance for the intoxicated man’s behavior and his self control plunged to zero, and he began to bludgeon him with his fists, elbows, and knees, driving the contentious drunkard towards the outer doors.