by M. Modak
Joshua said, “You must save these rooms for your top performers?”
Michael glanced at him, as he walked out and closed the door after Joshua exited, “That office will be for our next associate. Every office has a view like that. I even camouflaged the recycling bin in the parking lot so when everyone looks outside, they only see beauty.”
“Wow, you really went all out,” Joshua said.
“How so?”
“It’s great that everyone gets an exciting view of the city, but camouflaging the recycling bin... Recycling is nature at its best. Some natural things in life have beauty due to its innate imperfection and that can be beautiful too.”
“”You mean like an ugly child?” Michael replied.
Joshua laughed, “Not exactly but kind of like that. It’s like a very old wooden desk or chair. They still work, they do their job well but if you stripped them down again and repainted them they lose something magical, natural.”
Michael paused then said with a smile, “Ok Joshua if you stay here I’ll give you the props closet for your office.”
Joshua laughed, “There are extremes to everything. Nevertheless, if I get a job here, that closet will become as cozy as a second home… Will I get a window with a view?”
Michael laughed again, “If not I’ll get a Holo-Projector set up in there, and you can see anything you want. But maybe that’ll take away from the Wabi.”
Joshua chuckled, “I’d use that holo-generator until it had good Wabi.”
Michael snorted.
They continued the tour down the curving hallway as Michael pointed out the paintings he liked most and he gave a brief history of how he got them. Most of the artwork was mounted in-between the office doors and small chandeliers hung in rows from the arched ceiling.
He opened one office to find a group of people busy cutting, pasting, and arranging the shape of what could be a large building made of children’s construction paper. The design looked complicated as a whole, yet the pieces of ordinary colored paper scattered haphazardly across the table gave the room a comical feel. It seemed to be no more than snack time at the local kindergarten school. Everyone turned to them as they entered. Sincere looks of concentration disappeared replaced with smiles as they recognized Michael.
“Hi Michael,” the woman at the head of the table said.
Everyone started putting away the paper and crayons, leaving the digital images of mismatched colored patterns resembling walls, arches and beams still on the transparent table top.
On the wall before them was a projection of the same pieces they had just cutout. Joshua could only guess that the whole table must be a fixed computer screen.
The woman at the head of the table stayed where she was. She was moving the images from the pieces of construction paper, they had just put away, around the tabletop with her fingers, building a 3D model with the computer image on the wall viewer. Within seconds, she had what looked to be a nearly completed transparent roofing structure that sat on top of an expanding collection of small rickety buildings. When it looked like she had brought all the pieces together, she looked at Michael and said, “This is the new roofing system for our Pakistani partners.”
Michael walked completely into the room as he studied the mix-matched colors. He spoke in a Tek Voice, “Give me a background grid and change all the colors to gray.” A blue grid appeared in the background and numbers indicating the dimensions and load-bearing capacity of each cutout cluttered the screen. All the mixed up colors of the construction paper changed into a uniform gray, transforming the child like image into a recognizable building. The lines that divided each piece of paper disappeared and a solid roof joined like separate beads of water coming together into one smooth object. It had a central dome on top of several lower domes connected by arches and columns looking like a modern version of an Arab Palace.
“Now render the village underneath it and the background as if seen from the east,” Michael said into the air. A sprawling village made of mud and brick structures appeared as mountains grew up from deep in the background.
Michael pressed something on the tabletop and the blue background grid disappeared. Michael smiled, “Change the roof’s color to Sandgold and add the image of the solar grid.”
The roof changed from a uniform gray to a gritty sand color that sparkled like gold. A solar grid made of the same Sandgold colors materialized around the tops and sides of the domes, and like magic, lights instantly came on in all the houses under the dome.
“Nice touch Tameka. It really pushes the idea of the solar grid being the central character to this design, without saying a word.” She beamed at the praise. Michael spoke again in the Tek Voice, “Send a copy of this to my flex…”
Tameka interrupted him, “-It’s not finished yet Michael, don’t get impatient now. It’ll be done right after lunch.”
Michael looked over at her, “You have more to add? This looks great! Ok I can’t wait.”
“I’ll copy/paste you the minute it’s done, I promise,” she said.
“It looks great everyone,” Michael said to the remaining group. He turned and headed to the door, “Oh, this is Joshua.”
“Hi Joshua,” everyone said.
“Hello,” he said.
Michael walked out the door as echoes of their footsteps bounded down the hallway. Joshua followed and the door closed behind them. Then he took a few big steps to close the distance.
On the right, the hallway revealed an opening with a huge fresco of a small Mexican village clinging to the stucco wall. Four women sat on comfortable couches, chatting loudly to one another. They quieted as the two men approached and the closest woman stood up with a smile and said, “Michael, were going to have pizza delivered for lunch; you want the usual or some hot wings?”
“Hot wings,” he said greedily.
She looked at Joshua, “They serve subs and salads too if you don’t like pizza and wings.”
“I like wings,” Joshua replied with a smile.
“Okay, hot, mild, tame?” she asked.
“Hot.” He replied.
She repeated the order as she looked at one of the girls to see if she had gotten all that.
The woman repeated the order into a flexphone then pressed the recoil button and placed it in her purse.
All four women were standing now. The first woman was a beautiful Asian with jet-black hair and an easy smile. The others were a mix of two attractive Black women and one Latino women. All the women had a disarming way about them that caught him off guard. They seemed to be completely relaxed in such austere settings yet still professional.
“Joshua,” Michael said as he gestured to each of the women, starting from the farthest, “This is, Juliana, Bell, Tiffney, and Roxanne.” He said the last girl’s name with a little too much gusto and she winced.
“Just don’t start singing that old song again,” Roxanne said.
Michael laughed, “Ok, but I’m leaving him in your hands to complete the tour and have lunch. Please have the wings sent to my office when they get here. I have a Holo-Conference with Chase in five minutes. Do you have that reworked script I sent you?”
“Yes,” Juliana said with a laugh.
He turned serious, “You’re not supposed to laugh. What did I screw up?”
“Nothing, it’s Chase, he won’t let go of the title, “The Single Chair,” Bell replied with a grin.
Michael raised his shoulders then dropped them, “I’ll talk to him again. But the title is not what we’re working on.”
“I know,” Bell said.
“We like what you added, but we changed it from her supervisor talking to himself to him talking about the murder to a friend.
It took a little of the unnecessary creepiness from his character,” Juliana said as she gave a crooked smile, “and we corrected the spelling and grammar.” With that, all four women laughed together. Joshua noticed Michael’s smile wither slightly before returning.
He
pursed his lips and shook his head as he said, “It’s the end result that matters to me, and the rest is why I have such talented people around.” He looked at Joshua and said, “I’ll catch up with you in an hour or so, don’t let them emasculate you before then.”
“We’ll give him the real tour Michael,” Tiffney said.
Michael walked off waving his hands in resignation.
With a conspiratorial smile Bell said, “It’s the tour where you actually get to see us working and not just all the artwork in the hallways.”
“Okay, give me the real tour then.”
The five of them moved into the hallway again. Tiffney waved her hand before the door to their left and it opened. She said, “This is the, “Play Room,” Michael’s nick name for it.”
It was a very large high domed room with the same brightly lit chandelier as in the main foyer hanging from its center. The déjà vu returned. He began looking at everything with new intensity. The room had a more comfortable feel to it then everything he had seen so far. Then it hit him, the room reminded him of John’s lab. He could see, through his mind’s eye, Aughra’s enormous form sitting in the center, turning slowly. He felt alarmed as he remembered the intense feeling from this morning’s dreams. Was it shock, guilt…regret, terror! He was sure it was all of them. He let the image and feelings that came with it go, and forced his attention on the wooden cubicles lining the circular walls.
Several people stopped what they were doing and said, “Hi,” or gave quick smiles as he looked around. Everyone seemed to know what he was thinking and chose to let him alone in the moment as he took it all in.
Under the chandelier was a long wooden table. On the far end of the table, three men in business suits talked quietly over a large flexscreen. To his left the room opened into a raised empty platform that receded into the wall, obviously used to give performances. That’s where the stone fireplace was, he said to himself. The platform’s raised floor came from the same hardwood design as the rest of the hallways, and he realized, the hardwood floors are also the same as in John’s lab.
A door to a closet marked, “Props,” stood ajar next to the stage on the right and he gave a silent laugh. Beneath him, the carpet had a thick padding that gave a bounce in each step. He walked over to the stage and looked into the recess wall. Robes, hats and masks hung from wooden pegs, ready to be adorned at any whim.
He continued looking, shortly lost in the implications of such a work place. In this room, the cubicles were the only normal things, so far, which had no resemblance to John’s lab. Rolled up flexscreens were thrown on the desktops in an unpretentious way, and on each shelf he passed family holograms flashed from still to still above their tiny generators. A large, half-opened black bag sat on the desk next to the Aquarium.
Wow! He thought to himself. At the far end, the walls converged on a huge, saltwater aquarium adorned with living coral and a variety of colorful fish. He walked over to the Aquarium. It was a good six feet taller than him and four men standing together with arms stretched wide could not touch the tank’s curved edges with their fingers. The sound of water falling gently from above, into the tank, completed the hypnotizing effect.
Working here must be exciting and relaxing, he thought.
He felt someone touch his arm, and he turned to see a beautiful face he recognized. It was the blond woman Kayla from his dream. He knew her as John’s assistant and girlfriend. He literally pinched himself as he stared openly at her. With her hair pulled back and glasses on, she looked more humble than the woman in his dream did. She wore a light yellow dress with white and green flowers on it that flowed all the way to the ground. She seemed anything but hard, arrogant or prideful. He did see strength in her though, a quality she and Kayla both shared.
He could tell that he was staring at her with that, I just saw a ghost look. He quickly stuck out his hand and said in the calmest tone he could manage, “Hi.”
She smiled, while giving a look that said she had seen something there but chose to let it pass, “Hi,” she returned as she shook his hand, “My name is Miss. Anna Adison. You can call me Anna. Michael asked me to come meet you. He said you liked the refreshment stand I had installed early last year.”
Joshua nodded in astonishment.
She continued, “Michael told me you’ve seen it before? I pride myself on being original, its company policy. I designed everything in this building, other than the aquarium. So, I was wondering where you’ve seen it before.”
He did not know where to go with this, so he just put it out there, “I saw it in a large science lab in a dream I had.”
“You had a dream about my refreshment stand.”
“Well… not exactly, I had a dream about a scientist who was working on a big project for the government. He had slept in his office again, so he was the first one in the lab. He served coffee and breakfast from a refreshment stand, exactly like the one in the lounge, to his team members as they arrived each morning.”
She looked away for a moment and he could not tell what she was thinking. Then she said, “Ok that’s weird, but at least I was the first to make it in the real world.”
He gave a short laugh, “You are the first, at least in this real world.”
She smiled at that, “Joshua we’re looking for people with like minds. But I think that if you keep dreaming I may have to step up my game a little.”
She turned and walked to the main table and he followed instinctively. She sat down in a large seat at the middle of the table and waited for him. The other four women, he had come in with earlier, were waiting quietly to join her. After they sat down, Mrs. Adison said to no one in particular, “You’ve all read-up on Joshua.”
Joshua fidgeted a little in his seat. This is the strangest interview I’ve ever been on, he thought. He expected to be doing this part behind closed doors and not out in the open for everyone to judge him. He wondered who was on his side and who had already rejected him. His mind began to race as he looked across the faces of the people there.
Then he caught himself. His pounding heart told him he was starting to lose it, and that was the last thing he wanted now. Slowly, so he would not give away the nature of his anxiety, he took a deep breath. He remembered that he was ok before he came to this interview and he would be ok, one way or the other, when he left. He put his mind back on the timber of Anna’s voice and on what she was saying.
She continued, “He has a diverse background ranging from commercial construction to corporate security, he was accepted at two art schools, one here in Atlanta and another in Texas but he didn’t attend,” she pursed her lips in a similar way Michael did. She continued, “After talking to his former employers, and some people he worked with before, I came away with the portrait of a dedicated man, suited for innovative solutions for design problems and solid leadership skills. He is good by himself but shines in the right group. I believe, given the right opportunity, he will flourish and transform into a powerhouse of creative ideas.” She looked over at the four women. The three men at the end of the table had stopped what they were doing and were staring at him.
Joshua never felt more self-conscience in his life. I have to let this need and expectation go, he said to himself.
A man spoke up from the end of the table snapping him out of his self-reflection, “How much experience do you have in architectural design?”
“None,” he said, “though I’ve worked with many architects redesigning some of their floor plans that didn’t pan out in the real world. And I know how much architects love their plans marked up with red lines.” The man smirked and nodded at that.
The next man sitting to his right asked. “How long have you been out of work?”
Joshua replied, “It’s been over six months since I was laid off. I’ve done some odd jobs but nothing career wise.” The man looked disappointed.
Then, the third man spoke and Joshua noticed him for the first time, it was Tim from his dream, one of John’s t
eam leaders! If it could be said that John had any friends he considered Tim his best friend. The two locked eyes as if they had known each other since childhood. Understanding passed between them unnoticed by everyone else.
The man said, “Everyone here started out much as you have. Most of us have had some college but unless you’re an architect, lawyer or software engineer, your real talent is in your ability to adapt to any given problem and make it into a success.
That’s why you’re here today. Don’t let the marble and crystal fool you, were all just like family here. Michael and his wife created a place where work is a joy and we all take that seriously,” he gave a little laugh at that, “What we want to know now is what you think about us?”
Joshua thought, I didn’t exactly solve every problem using some innovative genius. There were mistakes. It felt more like desperation as I tried to meet unrealistic deadlines and hard work that had gotten me through the past years. It was strange seeing so many people and things from his dreams. They both disturbed and encouraged him.