A Place To Be Hollow

A Place To Be Hollow

In the city of Ghorgh - a uniform, clean place - the people have their purpose and are meant to be comfortable in their routine.

Then a metal box appears in the city square, though the buzzing drone of equally distanced persons take no notice of the cube’s appearance for the entire first day.

DAY TWO

The box is held by eight metal-like wires so thin it seems to be floating in air. It is suspended by about three meters, and the two-door bottlecap automobiles and short carrier trucks cause it to shake at times as they pass by.

The deafening feedback from an activated speaker is heard.

“Patrons and valued workers, please place no mind to the floating architecture amidst our city square. Thank you,” the deep, tonal voice says with perfect enunciation.

This is odd, though. No one seemed to have noticed the box before the announcement; its position is just out of eyeshot. The people walking the streets keep their gaze locked only to their front at a slight downward angle to avoid any eye contact with their fellow busy-goers thus increasing their time and work efficiency.

So, why then? Is it a test of complacency or, maybe, the love of labor? Do they wish to measure the loyalty the city folk have for the given regiment and rigidness of their lives?

One person of the hundreds walking to and from their given positions in the city square stops to look. She’s mild-mannered, in her mid-thirties, and sports a peculiar absence of any wrinkles and laugh lines. Her eyes droop, not for the lack of sleep, but rather the absence of facial manipulation and the consistency in her life routine.

Her patrons continue to walk around her, ignorant of her own dissolution of their human stream. She stares directly at the box with her dark brown eyes. Her skin is a pale brown, and she wears her natural beauty over any makeup. Her hair is tidy and straightened, the crop arching around the back of her head by each ear, a matte black with perfect symmetry. She wears a long burgundy coat covering her outfit and sports a pair of close toed black kitten heels.

The lady, now ever more curious by the box, looks around her and asks, “What is that box?” to anyone careful enough to listen.

Alas, the patrons continue to walk to and from their destinations, her presence practically invisible to their eyes. Hesitant, she looks at the box again, then at the slow-moving street of stubby automobiles.

The center of the square is a silver-colored tiled circle with a diamond grass patch in its middle. Nothing more, nothing else. The cars never stop circling around the center, though she realizes that their slow speeds are enough to hurry through to get a closer look at the box.

She waits, crosses through the busy street with care and attention, then reaches the center. She looks up at the box, structure seeming more glasslike and reflectively metallic. It seems to have hinges, yet there is no handle nor latch on it.

She tries to jump and reach for the box but fails. She throws her purse at it, and the box only shakes slightly, its position rigid and immovable by the way it’s held.

The loud feedback returns accompanied by the tap of the microphone.

“That’s enough, Miss Saoma,” it says, this time in a commanding feminine voice.

The lady tenses up, her arms now rigid and less relaxed. Her gaze tilts down slightly to avoid any eye contact. She walks through the street mindlessly and returns to the buzzing crowd she had previously melded into.

Like nothing had happened, the city has returned to its formalities. The only difference is there is now a pink handbag lying on the town’s center square grass patch.

DAY THREE

People have begun to notice the box in the air. They mostly ignore its existence, continuing on with their daily routines and mundane tasks which keep the city running to its efficiency.

Some bring up the box amidst conversation. Their peers either stop any chance of it continuing or shun them from their groups. It’s a sad thing to see, their subconscious irrelevance to the matter. They’d rather subjugate their lives to lowly routine than expand their horizons.

A man named Arlet Horon lives the very life. He’s a task overseer at the city square’s bureau - the Ghorhgan Task Federation: Building Zero, or GTF:0 for short.

It has been his life for sixty long years. His first day was as a sixteen-year-old task intern assisting his task overseer with lists and scheduling. Decades later, he became a task resource worker at forty-five, dictating prevalent and necessary tasks and routines for new or upcoming work patrons at the GTF. Thirty years of that and he then became the task commanding manager, the formal overseer of task production, relocation, and the efficacy for the city’s desired progress.

He’s been serving his position for almost a year now, and he’s questioned nothing. Not even the box.

“What do you think’s in there?” asks his assistant, a short and chubby boy in his mid-twenties with red blemishes surrounding his dark-skinned face.

Arlet shakes his head, his black, gelled hair neatly parted without any stray hairs, small circular eye-glass frames fit for reading rest above the tip of his crooked brown nose, and a barcode tattoo is seen on his nape.

“What did I tell you before Jya? It’s nothing. Probably an expansion to the city,” he replies to the curious boy whose eyes stare through the glass office window at the mysterious box.

“But what if it isn’t, sir? What if it’s a test for us?” he says, facing his commander.

“That lady tried getting to it yesterday. They didn’t punish her or anything, and if it’s a construction site, wouldn’t it be labeled as one?”

Arlet sighs, his hand resting the pen onto his work papers.

“Jya… I don’t want to have to add a term of warning to your profile. I don’t want to have to relocate you. Cut the nonsense. We have important work to do,” commands Arlet.

Jya stiffens up and nods. He quickly returns to the tiny desk in the corner of the office with its piles of papers ready for filing and stamping.

Arlet’s day is completely routine. He wakes up, brushes his teeth, and prepares a kettle for his morning black tea and breakfast. He cleans up, does his hair, and dresses in one of his many gray-colored suits for the eight to eight work shift. After work, he cleans his studio apartment in the managerial home district, a level down of exquisiteness from his bureau’s boss and others with the same title.

He’s never met his boss; although, he believes with hard work and repetition, they will one day grant him an audience for applause. The seventy-six-year-old can only hope.

DAY FOUR

Arlet brings a kettle to boil and prepares his morning tea. He adds a small swig of heavy cream and a sprinkle of sugar. He stirs the cup and watches the black tea turn into a sand-colored vortex in the ceramic mug, the white streams of cream quickly melding into the sweet, caffeinated liquid drink.

He brings the steaming mug close to his mouth, blows gently at the dancing vapors, then sips. He lets out a satisfied “ahh” in his cozy, velvet morning gown.

He follows his routine without any distraction. There are no televisions or radios in his home for he believes they would stunt his morning.

On his walk to the bureau he sees a chubby dark-skinned boy near the box. The crosswalk to his workplace is red and waiting, and his walking patrons keep their heads low as per usual.

“That’s enough, Jya,” says a lady’s voice on the intercom.

It’s grainy, her voice, but it’s hard to disobey, even through its low quality. Jya lowers his head and crosses the slow-moving street and walks into the bureau. The crosswalks’ lights turn green the very moment Jya is out of sight. Arlet lowers his head and walks to work.

Neatly stacked papers cover Arlet’s desk, their forms discussing time stamps, names of new and relocating workers, their efficiencies and whether they are necessary for that role, and sheets discussing possible new protocols for workers.

Jya sits at his desk, stamping and filing, but his eyes only stare onto his desk. His body rigid and tense, his brown eyes stuck in a trance of thought, and Arlet sometimes hears him whisper to himself at times.

“I think it’s more than a box, sir,” Jya says unprovoked, his eyes and hands still on the papers.

“Jya,” Arlet interrupts with a firm voice.

“It moves and looks like a swirl of colors hugging themselves over and over again,” he says, now with a struggling smile.

“Enough, Jya,” Arlet says, now looking at his assistant.

Jya looks at Arlet, his face covered in a mixture of manic horror and wonder.

“That lady, her name was Saoma. She’s disappeared, they say,” says Jya, his eyes staring directly into Arlet’s.

Arlet slams the palm of his writing hand onto the desk and rises, his chair loudly shuffling back against the laminate floor.

“Enough with this childlike fiction, Jya! The girl was probably transferred due to her past insolence, and if you continue this nonsense, you’ll be next!” he tells Jya in a loud whisper.

Jya looks back down at his papers, his wonder now a hovering gloom.

“Yes, sir,” he says quietly.

They return to their papers, like any other day, until it’s their time to go home.

DAY FIVE

On the walk to work Arlet exists within the crowd of the other patrons, crossing streets when told to, and arriving at his desk on the dot.

Jya’s missing from his desk, a peculiar thing given the fact that even the curious boy is always timely and exact with his schedule.

Arlet picks up the caller of the rotary phone on his desk and dials the single number seven.

“GTF:0 Human Services,” says an excited high-pitched voice.

“Hello, this is Arlet Horon of the Overseer branch at GTF:0, my assistant is late,” he says to the phone.

“Your new assistant Ergen Hason was assigned at 12:01 midnight. We expect him to arrive shortly,” she replies with confidence.

“What? What do you mean ‘new assistant’? Where’s Jya? Jya Mason?”

“Have a beautiful day, and thank you for your city’s best,” she says one final time, then hangs up.

Arlet shakes his head, his face full of bewilderment. He leaves his office room and approaches the nearest desk jockey in their cubby. This one’s hair is balding at its peak, with grains of silver at the scalp’s roots. He wears large square glasses that magnify his blue eyes, and liver spots lie beneath his dark eyebags.

Arlet approaches the mild-mannered man typing in names into his block of a computer and taps his shoulder.

“Have you seen Jya, Gerdy?” he asks him with a fearful quiver.

Gerdy shakes his head. “No, sir. I assumed he was transferred when he didn’t clock in at eight, sir,” he replies nervously, as if any response would cause him trouble.

Arlet grunts and looks over the cubby. He peers around at the autonomous workers stuck in their repetitive work.

“Has anyone seen Jya?” he shouts across the room.

Not a single response from the busy workers. Arlet grunts again and returns to his office. He sits down and forces himself back to his work. He’s already far off schedule.

*****

Arlet waits at his home, his eyes alternating between his clock and window which has a view towards the city square and its slowly silencing streets.

It’s almost ten past eleven when the streets grow completely quiet, and Arlet decides to leave his home to the city square.

With his hoodie up in the night brisk air, he hurries to the circle below the questionable box that Jya was so obsessed with. Samoa’s purse still rests on that same grass patch spot - grains of dirt sleep on its pink ruined leather, the quality reduced by the late night rains.

He looks up at the mysterious box. Jya was right - it swirls and moves on every face, like liquid mercury being churned with waves of night blues and crimson reds. There’s a hum from the cube, and one could even mistake it as a mother’s lullaby putting you to sleep.

Arlet tries jumping to the box. He fails. He takes off a shoe and tosses it at the cube. It hits, and the box emits a vibrational thump. He puts his shoe back on.

“Where is Jya?” he asks the box.

No answer. Just hums.

“The boy was an idiot, but he was good,” he says. “He cared for the city’s efficiency.”

Feedback is heard, this time it’s concentrated and personal, as if sound was speaking directly into his ears.

“Maybe he wanted to break his loop?” says the feminine voice.

Arlet turns slowly with his wrinkled fists raised. There’s no one there.

“Who said that? Who are you?” he asks with hesitance.

No answer. The wind grows colder, and the breeze faster. Its sudden change seems unnatural, and the cold air tastes artificial and metallic to the senses.

No matter. Arlet grabs the purse and searches its contents: Hand sanitizer, a lighter, and cigarettes.

The feedback returns.

“You are no different from them,” says the voice. “You’re seeking your truth, asking questions.”

“What have you done with Jya? He did nothing wrong, I swear it,” says Arlet.

“He did no wrong. Everything was right, just as you are doing,” says the voice with a gentleness in her tone.

The sound of gears shifting and mechanical turning is heard.

The box’s connectors loosen, and it slowly lowers until it’s aligned with Arlet’s face.

“You are finally ready to leave, Arlet,” says the voice. “Break your loop.”

Arlet lifts a finger towards the box and taps it gently. The box hums and shakes and shifts its shape; the swirls turn geometric, column and rows of circles, quadrants of squares, connecting hexagons and pentagons, then finally rows of ones and zeroes. Then silence. It’s brief and instant. The silence and sound end simultaneously, Arlet saw and heard it all with his naked eye.

The box then wraps around his head, and the world freezes.

“END OF SIMULATION,” says a loud robotic voice.

DAY SIX

Gerdy Smith was promoted to Overseer at GTF:0 at 11:59 PM last night. He sits in his new office chair, sifting through papers and clearing stacks of forms with diligence. His assistant, Ergen Hason, a tall pale-skinned person with a scrawny body wearing a baggy dress shirt and wrinkled gray dress pants, stamps and files papers for his overseer.

They work in silence, autonomously and efficiently. They question nothing, as they’re meant to, and they enjoy their work. This is their purpose - their routine and tasks. It is what keeps the city alive and working.

Gerdy peers at the window and looks at the box in the city center. He wonders what could be inside it. He wonders why he became the overseers and not the others. He wonders how Arlet was promoted after such an outburst yesterday. These are all questions in his head, though, harmless and ineffective. They mean nothing. Or so one would think.