My Work Is Not Yet Done

by Thomas Ligotti

  I sat up as high as I could in my giant’s chair.

  ‘At the last meeting you said that New Product was putting out one of their rare calls for suggestions for, well, new product ideas. This is a proposal for a new product, possibly an entire line of new product.’

  ‘That much I comprehend, thank you. It’s just, um, this is a little far afield from what I think anyone had in mind.’

  ‘I realize how it might seem that way. This is why I thought I would bring it up initially at this meeting. I’d consider whatever feedback anyone might have to be of value before I submitted my proposal in full.’

  ‘There’s more to this?’ asked Richard.

  ‘Quite a bit, yes,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm. That’s really something. I can only wonder where you found the time, given that the rest of us have been frantically trying to dig our way out of one landslide or another that’s threatening to bury us around here.’

  ‘I did almost all of it on my own time, if that’s your concern,’ I said.

  ‘My only concern,’ replied Richard as he slowly looked around the table at the other supervisors, ‘my primary concern, I should say, is that the New Product idea you’re proposing doesn’t look like the sort of thing we do around here. I mean, I’m all for being risky and innovative and all that, but this is . . . hoo boy.’

  ‘But we could do it,’ I argued. ‘We have the people, the know-how, all the processes in place already.’

  ‘True enough,’ admitted Richard. ‘But I don’t know. Does anyone else have any thoughts about this?’

  ‘It is different,’ said Perry.

  ‘Definitely different,’ said Harry.

  ‘I’m not sure we do in fact have the staff needed to take on something like this,’ said Mary.

  ‘I’ve got fewer people taking on more projects all the time,’ said Kerrie.

  ‘Systemically,’ Barry began, instantly losing the attention of his auditors. At one juncture in his jargon-polluted soliloquy of a business analyst he used the words ‘data vamping,’ which I believe was a neologism of his own devising. Ultimately, of course, he sided with Richard, concluding that my idea, which Barry explained had built into it at least two, perhaps two and a half ‘facets’, was not ‘leverage focused’, nor was it ‘customerly’, in Barry’s opinion.

  Sherry was at a characteristic loss to add anything to the litany of negation already recited by the others, although she did manage to come up with ‘faster, better, cheaper’, which on this occasion might be construed to mean that my proposal was not quite in line with this triple-headed ideal.

  By this point I was writhing within the creaking depths of my chair, shaking my head in a slight palsy of horror and forming phrases in my mind that refused to come together into coherent sentences. Then, for a brief moment, the words congealed.

  ‘I know that the company has traditionally produced only that which looks like what it has previously produced – in other words, recycled impersonations of what we’ve been doing for the past two decades.’

  ‘It’s called leveraging, Frank. It’s what we do, and it’s still managing a good margin.’

  ‘But for how much longer?’

  ‘Look,’ said Richard, ‘I enjoy brainstorming new ideas as much as the next guy. It’s just that, by bringing this to me, to all of us, it’s like asking for a sanction of some kind. And that’s asking a lot. How about if you hold off on this a while. Give us all some time to think this over and revisit the whole thing at a later date. What do you say?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, positive that this matter would never arise again.

  ‘Fine,’ said Richard. ‘Now let’s move on to the next item on the agenda.’

  And for the rest of the meeting I tried not to betray my inner turmoil. Moreover, I couldn’t keep my mind from its obsession with a new terror: the sense that I had been the victim of an ambush – that no scheme that I might have advanced before that particular gathering stood a chance, that whatever plan I had brought to that meeting and laid upon that time-ravaged table would have died there.

  Outside the windows of that antiquated room the fog was slowly fading away, revealing once again a view of the river and a cityscape in which my mind moved among scenes of calming decay.

  3

  FEAR, WHEN BLENDED with failure, distills into a deadly brew. I had been so caught up in what I thought was the brilliance of my new idea, my special plan, that I never seriously pondered the consequences of it being rejected out of hand by the very persons I most wanted to accept it. This was a miscalculation of vast proportions, no question about it. For the rest of that morning, as I sat in my supervisor’s cubicle, I could do nothing but inwardly reproach myself for being a creature of deranged judgment . . . and not even that: I was no more than a primitive organism with no faculty of judgment whatever, a slick of slime mold posing as a human being. ‘You’re making too much of this,’ said one of those secondary selves that are implanted inside every one of us and that come to attention on these occasions, spitting forth idiotic clichés like a mad schoolmaster from a worn-out textbook of conventional wisdom. ‘In the grand scheme of things,’ the voice continued before I grabbed it with both hands and wrung its neck, spitting out my words of contempt through gritted teeth –

  A: There is no grand scheme of things.

  B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity.

  C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity.

  When Galileo brought his findings before the board of directors at Vatican Inc., he was at least armed with facts that reasonably supported his botched attempt to deal with those who endorsed the obscene notion of a grand scheme of things. He could know that he was right, even though he was also an utter fool for sharing what he knew with the wrong people.

  I couldn’t know anything about the worth of my idea, my plan; its value resided exclusively in the estimation of the people around me, especially Richard. It didn’t matter – not even to me – whether or not it would prove to be a source of profit to the company, in the unlikely event that the greater powers of that commercial entity ever acted on my plans. Most initiatives did not amount to much. The important thing was to demonstrate that my four cloven feet were skittering swinishly in the same direction as those of everyone else. The debacle that took place at the meeting that foggy morning merely served to give away what I most wanted to hide: that I was moving in an entirely different direction from the rest of them.

  My only recourse now was to follow Galileo’s example and recant my ridiculous idea, my special plan. Why my mind had brought forth such a scheme had begun to confound even me. I knew what I was supposed to say and do in my position at the company, and those duties did not involve any kind of innovation or brilliance whatever. From that moment I forswore such things as abominations and vowed never again to conceive a new thought or scheme or plan unless bidden to do so, a task I knew would never be inflicted on me. I would say and do only that which I was supposed to say and do. That was all. That and only that.

  But as my mind was still spinning in this groove of histrionic vows and disavowals, swearings and swearings off, the hulking shape of Richard appeared at the entrance to my cubicle.

  ‘Got a minute?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I said as he was already stepping into my workspace and making himself at home. In his fist was a copy of the two-page hand-out delineating the proposal I had proffered earlier that morning.

  ‘Okay, here’s how it is. Number one – I’m not saying that I’m going to make myself a signatory to any of this, or that I endorse it in any way,’ he said, lightly shaking at me the two-page hand-out he was holding. ‘Number two – I don’t want you to think that I’m a complete villain and that my function around here is to squash your spirit every chance I get. Therefore, I’ve decided to pass this along to New Product – no
special delivery, no marching bands or fanfare, just push it into their mailbox and see what they make of it. Cut this down to a single page, a half-page would be even better, and send it to me. I’ll forward it to the NP crew along with some other communiqués I have for them. Can you live with that?’

  ‘Yes, I can. Thanks very much.’

  I sounded casual enough, or so I believed, but at that moment I could not help feeling a curative relief streaming through my system. I had been saved. And despite all the bitter renunciations that had echoed over and over only moments before in the darkness inside me, I had now become swollen with gratitude. Was this how Richard had acquired his rumored nickname? Thank you, Doc!

  ‘Maybe we can even fit in your product idea for further discussion at next week’s meeting,’ continued Richard. ‘How’s that sound?’

  ‘Sounds fine.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Richard, turning to exit my cubicle. But he caught himself in mid-turn and doubled back. ‘Uh, Frank,’ he said in what sounded to me a lowered tone of voice.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Along with the memo for New Product, perhaps you should forward to me the rest of the work you’ve done on this,’ Richard said, once again rattling the two-page hand-out in the air.

  ‘As I said at the meeting, I worked on this almost entirely at home. And that’s where it is right now. Some of it’s still in hand-written form. I’ll clean it all up and send it to you as soon as I can, if that’s okay.’ I hadn’t missed a beat in my response to Richard’s request, and yet for an unmeasurable splinter of a moment I saw him turn to stone before my eyes and fix a granite gaze upon me.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  After Richard walked off I waited until I thought it was safe, and then I collapsed my upper body across the counter of my cubicle. He knew, I thought. He knew I was lying to him. I had the entire proposal on a disk and printed out in polished form as a stack of fiftysome pages in the lower drawer of my desk. I opened the drawer to check that its contents were actually still there. They were, even though for some delirious reason I thought they might not be. I touched the disk and flipped through the pages several times. They were still there. I closed the desk drawer. Then I opened it again and repeated my inspection a few more times before finally locking the drawer and placing the key inside my wallet.

  What I still could not understand was the reason for my deception. It had been committed as an act of pure instinct, without any rational basis. It couldn’t have been that I was afraid that Richard was going to steal my proposal and arrange to take credit for it himself, I thought. Others had done that to me over the years, and I was never the least put out by their betrayal. I wasn’t looking to move any higher in the company than my present position, so why should I care about making time with anyone but my immediate superior?

  I wanted to stay where I was, I wanted to keep my working life securely in the status quo, and I wanted to be left alone. This had been the motive for all my actions in my job. This was why employees of a similar disposition transferred to my department whenever there was an opening. We were a troupe of contented parasites, self-made failures, and complacent losers. What lives we had were carried on entirely outside the psychic perimeter of the company. We did our jobs and did them as well as or better than anyone else in that organization. And then we went home and spent time with our families or worked in our gardens or painted pictures or simply did nothing at all. Whatever we sought to attain in this precarious and – in all candor – wretched world, we looked for outside the company.

  Of course I could always send my full proposal the very next day, and Richard could then do with it what he wished. In that sense I had done myself no special harm. But he would still know that I had lied to him, and I had no idea what that might mean.

  4

  THREE DAYS PASSED. On each of those days immediately upon waking from my senseless or scary dreams, I said to myself, ‘Today I’m going to send Richard the document of my plan.’ At the end of each day, having sent nothing to Richard, I said to myself, ‘Tomorrow, without fail, I’m going to send Richard the document of my plan.’

  So why was I stalling in this matter? Why was I setting out on a course that was clearly one of self-destruction, compounding my existing offense of having lied to Richard with that of blatant contempt for his instructions to send him the complete document of my plan? A provisional answer to this question came to me slowly over the course of those three days. And it had begun with that weekly meeting at which I felt myself to be the victim of ambush by all of them, not only Richard. His was simply the biggest and most hideous head of the monster: six others also emanated from the body of the beast, circling on long, snaky necks about the expansive and twisted face at the center of the thing, with its bloodshot eyes and killing breath (Richard did in sooth have a case of halitosis that could gag a maggot). Several incidents over this three-day period supported, however subtly, my seven-against-one theory. Each of these incidents was apparently isolated. Some of them, I would have been quick to concede, were quite possibly without any nefarious intent or significance. I list them here in sequential order, with subheads to forecast the main players involved in these vignettes. So here we go, beginning with –

  Perry

  Later on Monday, the day of the weekly meeting, I was passing through the company’s reception area. This was a plushly carpeted, softly lighted, and expensively decorated space that served both to impress and intimidate anyone who entered it, particularly first-time visitors such as new-job applicants waiting to be summoned for an interview, business people waiting to be summoned by whomever was their contact within the company, or simply some kid delivering pizzas.

  Among the appointments of this area was a grand piano, which no one in the company ever touched . . . except Perry. It was not an unusual sight, especially around lunchtime, to see him either approaching, walking away from, hovering over, or actually playing that piano. Fortunately for all concerned he never played for very long. What he did play was invariable. Perry’s repertoire, judging by what I heard, consisted wholly of a series of jazzy-sounding chord changes that he would ham-fistedly pound out, following this racket with a tinkly right-hand flourish on the upper keys.

  This activity was but a single element of the jazz-world image of himself that Perry appeared to hold and evidently desired to convey to others, although he did so in a haphazard, or perhaps half-hearted, manner. Overall, Perry was simply not a very jazzy individual. And he was intelligent and self-reflective enough to realize this fact. Nonetheless, from whatever mysterious motives, Perry was willing to settle for a Halloween costume version of Mr Jazz that consisted of a few props, a stereotyped gesture or two, and a plastic mask. Aside from the piano-playing and some talk about the latest CD of jazz music he had purchased, the most conspicuous aspect of Perry’s jazzy persona was his eyeglasses, which were the precise type of thick-framed, heavily tinted jobs sported by cool-jazz artists of the 1950s in photographs on the back covers of several prominent record albums of the period. Now, I myself wore eyeglasses (contemporary in design), the lenses of which had a slight amber tint blended into them, although I had opted for this feature on the advice of an optometrist. (I never met an eye doctor or a dentist who wasn’t a hustler at heart. Let’s not even talk about physicians or – puh! – those bloodletters of the mind with a psychiatric shingle outside their door.) The optometrist suggested that such tinting would better enable my defective sight to tolerate the fluorescent lights of the office as well as the sort of illumination radiated by the screens of televisions and . . . boy, do I hate to even use the word: computers – there, I said it.

  As previously mentioned, I was merely passing through the company’s reception area. My destination was elsewhere on that floor, where I needed to attend a meeting that concerned some routine function of my job. The piano was so positioned that Perry’s jazz-oriented fumblings were being conducted with his back to me as I quietly passed by. So there was
no call for me to shout out a hello or disturb the genius jazzer in any way.

  But just as I was about to move out of Perry’s range, I saw that his head turned to look at me over his shoulder. Of course I couldn’t very well have halted in my tracks at that point and acknowledged that I had seen him look at me over his shoulder in what I thought to be a highly devious and menacing way, his eyes fully shaded by the soft lighting of the reception area reflecting off his heavily tinted glasses. At the same moment that he turned his head in my direction, Perry ended his musical performance not with a tinkling flourish on the upper keys of the piano but with a dissonant cluster of notes made by a smash of his left hand on the lowest register of the keyboard. The cacophonous growl of these notes followed me as I made it around a corner and began walking down a long and brilliantly fluorescent hallway on my way to the meeting, which happened to include –

  Mary

  There she stood some distance down the hallway, only a few feet from the open door of the meeting room, frozen for a second in a pose I had seen her assume before. I thought of it as her ‘pre-entry pose’, a posture she took on for a fraction of a second during which she seemed to stiffen even more than usual, as if to collect and consolidate herself both mentally and physically before entering a given public forum. Mary was in her fifties and availed herself – from her fluffy-haired head to her pointy high-heels – of all the sartorial and cosmetic armor that was possible for one woman to bear. When viewed in her pre-entry pose, or really at any time when she was not speaking or jotting things in her scheduling book or engaged in some movement or other, she could easily be taken for a mannikin, even at the closest quarters.

  Without turning her head toward me – I didn’t need that from a mannikin – she entered the meeting room . . . and I followed close behind.

  In the course of this meeting, another regular, weekly affair – this one focusing on schedules of production – Mary found the occasion to remark, ‘Of course, Frank’s department won’t be able to meet this deadline,’ without qualifying this statement with the reason, which she well knew, for this fact.