When he’d passed from one plane to the next, the pressed paper cup tray of coffees in his hands instantaneously rearranged its individual atoms into a hickory stick and a bunch of bananas which Roger promptly dropped onto the floor. His oversized office duds were replaced with a too-tight taupe jumpsuit, complete with name tag, and his glorious kitty kat neck tie dissipated into the ether, gone but not forgotten. The only thing that stayed with Roger through the change was a little brown pamphlet in his breast pocket.
Phil’s 5’ 3” frame facing off across the room seemed far more imposing than his slight stature would suggest. Chest puffed out, shoulders thrown back, chin high, he glared down his nose at Roger. Quite a feat since the other man had a good eight inches on him.
“I suppose you think this is funny?” Phil said.
“Funny? I don’t-”
“You are the one who didn’t even try to keep your herd wrangled but I’m the one who gets blamed. Every damn time. Well, I’ve had it. I warned you, Roger. Things are about to get very unpleasant for you.”
“Ummm…” Roger glanced around at the dozens of apes in bowties and suspenders throwing calculators and scraps of office paper into the air all around him. It was a little hard to imagine a more unpleasant scenario.
“You are obviously not suited for management, Roger. I have determined that your talents are best served sweeping stalls and scrubbing urinals. Not engaging with employees. Congratulations, you’ve been given a demotion.”
To be fair, that came as no big surprise to Roger. He’d been a terrible supervisor, after all. And actually, the idea of cleaning up someone else’s crap for once sounded preferable to managing minimum wage data entry engineers. At least janitors could set their own pace and there was some comfort in actually knowing that you’d be facing a shitty day at work.
“It’s only what you deserve, you know,” Phil continued as though Roger had tried to argue. “Nobody really likes their job but that doesn’t mean they don’t have to do it. I’d rather be working on my novel, but you don’t hear me complaining. Do you?”
Phil didn’t wait for him to respond. Before he could so much as open his mouth, Roger found himself gripping a mop handle in the middle of a musty, monochromatic restroom. He glanced down at his nametag and was happy to see that all it said was ‘Roger’. No ridiculous title to remember. No more unrealistic obligations or responsibilities to worry about. No more Arlo or Gillian. Roger sighed happily to himself as he moved the mop methodically across the floor, finally free of the miasma of middle management.
The free feeling only lasted a moment though. The door to the bathroom swung open, and poor Roger the janitor sighed in resignation at the sudden reappearance of Arlo Black and Gillian Frost.
“Supervisor Goodspeed?” Arlo said, “What are you… why are you dressed like that?”
“Call me Roger.” He glanced down at the jumpsuit with his name tag slightly askew. “I got transferred.”
“It’s you,” Gillian said softly. “You’re doing this somehow.”
“What?” Roger said.
“How are you doing it?”
Roger looked back and forth between the two of them. “Doing what?”
Gillian snorted. “There’s something wrong with us; with this whole place. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
“I noticed,” Roger said. “But it’s not me, Gillian-ˮ
“What?! What did you say?”
“I noticed?”
“You called me Gillian.”
“Yeah…”
“What’s that?” Arlo cut off Roger’s confused response.
The sometime supervisor/current custodian glanced down at the front of his coveralls. From the breast pocket peeked a little brown booklet.
“Oh,” Roger said. “It’s a handbook. For…” He trailed off as Arlo pulled it from his pocket, flipping it open to scan the pages.
On the inside cover, someone had penciled a short paragraph in cursive followed by a little sad face. “Welcome to Forever Pharma. Right about now, you may be asking yourself, ‘Why am I here?’ Well, you must have made some poor life choices to end up in this place, pal.” He stopped to glance up at Roger and Gillian. The sudden silence in the room was deafening. “As far as dead-end jobs go, this is the last one you’ll ever do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gillian said.
Arlo thumbed through the printed pages, eyes scanning random text, his mouth moving wordlessly.
“Arlo!” Gillian shouted. “What does it say?!”
“It says we’re stuck here…”
“That’s ridiculous,” Gillian said. “Give it to me.” She snatched the pamphlet from his fingers, and scanned the first page, her eyebrows drawing together. “Incoming worker cells of Forever Pharmaceuticals, division of HADES Corp International, trademark applied for, are automatically assigned a permanent position upon arrival. In the event that they are unable to adequately fulfill the job duties of that position, management reserves the right to reassign any cell to a new job of management’s choosing. Under no circumstances will the cells, henceforth referred to as drones, be allowed to ‘opt out’ of the program. Every drone has their role to fulfill. There are no exceptions.”
She glanced up at the others. “What…”
Her wide eyes settled on the row of toilet stalls across the room.
“Gillian?” Arlo said.
She was frozen completely still, like those automatons on the sidewalk outside. Arlo exchanged a worried look with Roger.
“I don’t think we need to panic. I mean, Roger wished he had a different job and they gave him one. So, that whole no opting out thing is probably rubbish. And we know that we can change stuff. Little things. Like when I wished you had a lucky rabbit foot, and now you do. Maybe if we work at it, we can change more stuff. Maybe other things have changed that we just haven’t noticed yet.”
She wasn’t even listening to
