Chapter 2 - The Cubicle Hedge

Mr. Grey, the old address in hand, returned to his department. Which is to say, Mr. Grey returned to the outer border of his department’s Cubicle Hedge.

In the preceding chapter, Mr. Grey exited the Hedge with little ado. The return to his cubicle, through the maze of other cubicles, requires some exposition. Firstly, because King’s Law in Starharbor mandates all narrative storytelling devote several sentences to any undertaking of significant difficulty. Secondly, because this maze was easier to get out of than to get into. This made it unlike certain mazes of other narratives, and quite contrary to difficult undertakings in general. So, adhering to local custom, and doing justice to Mr. Grey, here follows his return to the cubicle.

Mr. Grey stepped to an opening in the wall of cubicles before him. Suddenly he leapt forward. Behind, a cubicle dropped into the place he’d been standing, landing with the hollow sound of vibrating corkboard. Mr. Grey had narrowly avoided a crushing. The newly-placed cubicle cut off any escape; no concern of Mr. Grey, as he meant to press forward regardless. Through the rectangular doorway of the newly placed cube, Mr. Grey saw a pencil pusher scribbling at a form, unperturbed by the jarring workplace relocation.

The cubicles of the Cubicle Hedge moved constantly. Mr. Grey’s swift dodge fell within day-to-day business proceedings. Above the puzzle of rectangular blocks, dozens of great cranes swooped. They plucked cubicles in their claws from one place and dropped them into another. Sometimes the blocks formed square units of nine, with the central cubicle surrounded by eight others, and the central worker unable to escape or consult with clients. Sometimes the cubicles landed on other cubicles. The corkboard walls were not quite as tall as the average seated head. The lower occupant hunched quickly, or else bruised their slow skull. The Hedge shuffled constantly, and seemingly without motive. The designers had built the cranes to find the perfectly efficient layout of pencil-pushers, but the cranes reorganized cubicles with no algorithm, as though trying to solve a million-piece jigsaw by hoping each random permutation of parts would complete the picture.

Mr. Grey turned his senses to finding his own cubicle in the labyrinth. He relied on grey ears more than grey eyes. The packed corkboard-sheet walls and cardboard-box crenelations excluded light from the dingy workplace. But the clickety-clackety-word-machines produced a constant hum of pops and ticks and dings. Mr. Grey could listen to those instruments’ familiar rhythm. If he heard them behind a wall, he knew some coworker occupied the cube; if he didn’t, he’d turn to his eyes for a visual check.

A low, dangerous, commanding roar, coming from deeper in the Hedge, compelled Mr. Grey to action. He set a gliding stride, passing quickly beneath the swooping shadows of cranes and suspended cubicles.

Mr. Grey failed to notice a separate shadow detaching itself from the wall. It began trailing him through the Hedge.

The grey man slid along bleak cubicle corridors; grey ears keyed to the underlying hum behind the walls; grey eyes flicking to any alcove his ears said was empty. He put no stock in past maze layouts, nor in memory of the paths he had already trod. The cranes ‘optimized’ the layout with blurring changes. One moment he’d step down a long corridor, and round a corner to see a cul-de-sac. Doubling back, he’d find the return path blocked by a brand-new paneled partition; never his own unfortunately. With no recourse but to turn around, Mr. Grey would pace the corridor once more, only to find the way suddenly opened, the blind alley carried off in the talons of a crane.

Other times, Mr. Grey came to forks in the hedge, and would spend brief tocks listening and watching for a sign of the truest direction. He tried picking prongs with a lower hum, or ones with an immediately vacant cubicle along the corridor (still not his own, but a lucky start to any fork). Sometimes he simply strode the pleasantest prong, usually the one which took him further from the roaring beast, or had many empty cubes.

Still, Mr. Grey’s comfortable space eluded him. Sometimes he chose his direction poorly. Every space would be occupied with another pencil pusher, who sometimes said hello and forced Mr. Grey to nod back. Then he would scrunch more tightly into himself. These latter kinds of route were harder for the grey man to travel. He considered every fork he came upon with care. Not too much care though; the roar sounded always close behind.

In this seeking and skulking and turning about, Mr. Grey never saw his second shadow. It trailed him all the way. Whenever Mr. Grey swiveled 180-degrees and walked the way he had come, the shadow would dive into an empty cube. It waited for him to pass, then reattached itself when he’d moved by.

Mr. Grey’s distraction came largely from the intrusive, commanding roar. It cut through the word machines’ din, barking mad orders and demands. Whichever direction he heard this noise, he did his utmost to travel the opposite way. Yet, no matter his choice, the roar came closer with each bend of the Hedge.

More road blocks. More empty cubicles. No luck. Mr. Grey passed by many a motivational picture. Perhaps they gave him courage, though it never showed in his face. Sometimes he saw coworkers he knew, adding their own clicks or clacks to the word-machine din. Sometimes he escaped without eye contact. Always at his back was that other shadow. Always before him was the roar, coming closer and closer. Every twist in the maze and click in the air brought that beast nearer. Before long, Mr. Grey heard sloshing; the sound of tea in a metal shaker; the beast’s breath on his neck.

Just when the beast’s fangs seemed to pull at the stiff, grey neck-hairs, and the sloshing breathing drowned out the word-machines’ hum; just when the placid grey glide began showing a falter in the sure step; just when every shadow of every uplifted cubicle seemed to dunk him into gothic midnight; he finally saw it. His cubicle! With a quick - but upright — speed-walk, Mr. Grey cleared the remaining distance to his personal space. He passed through the rectangle threshold and slid into his metal chair. He twitched his eyes back the way he’d come. He saw no Hedge beast. After a moment, Mr. Grey heard its roar off in a farther quarter of the Hedge. He gave himself a deep breath, through the nostrils.

Mr. Grey had made it back to his cubicle, and escaped the monster of the Hedge.

He never saw the creep of the second shadow. It had stopped when he entered his comfortable box. His eyes missed its pause, a few paces away. Mr. Grey didn’t notice as it came on once more, creeping toward him in his cubicle.

---

Mr. Grey sat correctly into his unforgiving, metal chair. He assumed proper, stiff-backed posture, directly before his clickety-clackety word machine. In a show of mechanical prowess, he ran a hand - the one unburnt by Ms. Maysey’s pipe lighting - over the keys. They grooved perfectly to his fingers. Mr. Grey had a standard word-machine. It looked mechanically plain and clacked mechanically loud. It produced regularly-sized, regularly-legible type. Not all word-machines did. Some people worked machines the size of thumbtacks, picking away at the keys with pairs of toothpicks. Other pushers manned room-sized word-machines, which did not so much ‘clickety-clack’ as they ‘rumbly-clang’ed. Pencil pushers with that job often moonlit as circus acrobats, so adept were they at leaping from key to key. They made legal copies for giants.

The silhouette of a cubicle crane glided overhead. With the grey hand and fifty percent of his thoughts, Mr. Grey re-clicked the first letters of our old friend, The Notice. With the scorched hand and the rest of his thoughts, Mr. Grey flattened the ancient change-of-address form into a neat square on the desk. He armed himself for this second process of pencil pushery. He tucked a pencil behind one ear, a highlighter (grey) behind the other, and dipped his quill in ink.

The desk was set. The text of the Notice waited in his thoughts, watercolor-vivid. Like the orchestra waiting for its conductor, the work waited for Mr. Grey’s signal to begin.

The work had just begun a splendid introduction, with the first pleasing scratches of quill on parchment, and the first clickety drums of keys on the same, when a voice trumpeted from Mr. Grey’s cubicle door.

“Hello mister!”

The clacks of the word machine stuttered into silence; faltering, fading notes of a performance interrupted. Mr. Grey kept his body’s composure. He turned stiffly in the direction of the voice.

A young girl stood at his cubicle’s entrance, her foot jackhammering. Magma hair flowed down her neck. It rolled past eyes like metal meeting grindstone, down her shoulders, draping over a vibrant robe. In spark burned and patchy fabric, her robe showed a hot, glowing dragon-engine pulling a train of cars behind it, with sunrise-touched smoke billowing up the sleeve, mixing at the shoulder with the girl’s roiling hair. She had her cuffs rolled up to show arms prematurely leathered by manual labor. One of these arms held a potted alwayslush sapling; the pot being superfluous, as the sapling was artificial.

The woman’s words flew into the clickety-clacks, lost in the silent hum as these two unalike persons molded the surface impressions of each other. The grey eyes held still as they reviewed the foreign invader in this sanctuary. The sparking eyes flickered all across the stiff man, seeking some - any - variety to the grey.

Mr. Grey ended the appraisal. He cleared a dry throat and said, “Did you need something, Miss…?”

“Sure do!”

“I didn’t mean… Consultations are usually - or rather, always - by appointment. Miss…?” Mr. Grey put stronger emphasis on the last questioning word the second time around.

“Thanks for deviating. I spied you coming in, so I knew you weren’t busy.”

The girl plopped into the visitor’s chair at the corner of Mr. Grey’s desk. She slid around on the flat, square seat for a moment, seeking in vain a comfortable position in that piece of furniture. She suddenly knifed her hand out for a handshake. Mr. Grey’s hand was slightly dewier than he liked, but he shook hers. He said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name, Miss…?”

The girl ended the handshake when it became obvious Mr. Grey wouldn’t. She said, “Don’t say I’m ‘Miss’. I don’t listen to that.”

“What do you wish to be called then, M…” Mr. Grey let the question trail off.

“Call me Jodee. J. O. D. E. E. Jodee Coats. You’ll figure the last part. Well? Jot it on your forms, Mister!”

Mr. Grey scribbled the name down on a blank piece of parchment without thinking. “Ms. Coats, my…”

“Jodee Coats! No Miss, pal.”

“My mistake. Jodee Coats, my name is Mr. Grey. I don…”

Jodee Coats interrupted him with a sharp laugh. “Ain’t that a sure fit! Appreciate the help, Mr. Grey.”

“Actually, the ‘help’s what I’m getting at. You see, Mi.. Jodee Coats, I have a Notice fresh on my mind. And I have some - or rather, several - clients with upcoming appointments. Did you mean to speak with another pencil pusher?” Mr. Grey’s voice came softer and softer as he went on, until the last words were only a breath.

“Nope. I don’t exist on schedule.”

Mr. Grey checked his posture and sat straighter. “Everything’s done by appointment at the Starharbor Regional Justice Center. You might need to return to the reception floor.”

“Golly dang it! Do you have to make everything impossible?”

Mr. Grey paled, internally. “I’m… I’m sorry?”

“I doubt it!” Jodee Coats stamped her foot hard, shoving the metal chair back with a screech. She paced the cubicle, which involved lots of sharp turns and small steps in the diminutive box. “It’s not fair! You pushers suck every free moment I have. You tie every soul lost in this monstrous tower down, with ruby tape. Do you ever think about someone other than yourself?”

“I… I… Miss… I mean Jodee Coats; I couldn’t say what the reason for…”

“If there’s no good reason for appointments, you’ve got literally no excuse not to fix my parchments!”

What could one faltering, grey man do against such incorrigible conversation? Mr. Grey agreed to help her with her documents. Jodee Coats sat back down in a flurry. The locomotive-cloud pattern on her robe billowed with animation. Mr. Grey took a change of address form - the first of many - from a stack on the metal desk, and set it squarely before Jodee. He drew and checked his pocket ticker. His next appointment was scheduled to start soon. He hoped the Hedge would slow his client.

When Mr. Grey looked up from the ticker at his unscheduled guest, Jodee had slid the form back to Mr. Grey. She held out his quill, freshly inked, for him to take. In mute resignation Mr. Grey accepted it. He scratched her name into the proper box on the page, in angular letters. Then he left his hand hovering, ready to turn whatever answers she gave into clean blocks of text.

Mr. Grey asked her for her current address. She gave it to him. He wrote. He asked her for her new address. She didn’t have one. He didn’t write. Mr. Grey looked up and said, “Perhaps there’s been some failure of communication? I need to know where you’ll be living.”

“I’m living on the road. I’m done for good with big, chilly Starharbor. I’m getting out and seeing the Moats,” Jodee banged a fist on the desk, shuddering the metal.

Mr. Grey pushed the form away and placed the quill in the inkstand. “This department handles permanent residence changes.”

Jodee stood and stomped again, back and forth in the small cube, glowering at the floor. Her knuckles stood out on the alwayslush pot like ivory inlays. Her movement sent the time-stained parchment - the old address Mr. Grey needed to copy - fluttering to the floor. She looked up when the roar of the hedge beast resounded once more in the distance. “What’s that keen I keep hearing?”

“It’s the department head; my supervisor, Mr. York. As I was saying, this department doesn’t process visas. Only permanent relocation.”

She waved her alwayslush sapling dismissively. She landed back into the client chair with a crash and drummed her fingers against the table’s metal top. “Just fill in whatever forms are for visas then.”

“I’m not making myself very clear Mi… Young Coats,” ‘Young’ was hardly the proper form of address, but Mr. Grey felt more comfortable using a title than saying her full name. “I can’t draw up a visa for you.”

“Oh, botheration! Mister Grey, you can do a teensy exception.”

“There is no question of exception, or ability, Young Coats,” Mr. Grey re-tucked the pencil and highlighter behind his ears and straightened the quill in the inkstand. “I don’t have the correct forms. My signature’s meaningless on them, even if I did. I’ve no authority to grant Odormoat passage permission. I just file the address forms. For people who already have that permission.”

“Ugh, you people,” Jodee snarled. “Then I’ll shirk your silly forms.”

She screeched her chair across the floor and bounced to her feet. Her robe and hair billowed as she turned to dart from the cube. A weary Mr. Grey almost let her go. Something in her attitude, however; in her dismissal of the entire process; bored through the stony exterior of Mr. Grey. It nagged him. He said, “Young Coats, I… I would say that’s not the finest decision. The bouncers don’t let people through the Odormoats without visas, you know.”

She glared at him, eyes bright with defiance. “I’ll sneak out.”

“Miss Coats…”

“I told you; no honoring titlery!”

“Young Coats, reconsider the circumstances. The visas and change of address forms, they’re required by law for a reason. A good reason, I hazard. The king’s government doesn’t hand them to anybody that asks. It’s all to keep people safe, you know. One can never be sure of the smells from foreign parts. Or how your own familiar scents might - unknowingly - trouble others. Imagine the terrible odors you might be ambushed by; or might - again, unknowingly - attack others with. Imagine the symptoms: coughing, sneezing, lethargy. Can you reckon against different cultures and industries, making their own olfactory ecosystem? Those environments might - or rather, likely would - be thrown from their delicate balance and unique nature, by too frequent communication of alien fumes. Wiser scholars than I have given examples - to me personally - of miserable allergic reactions on both sides, caused by your proposed manner of mingling. They’ve lectured truthfully and convincingly. Studies showed the gamut of issues which ‘adventures’ of this sort created. Back in a time when things were worse. Much worse. Before the Odormoats. Before the visas. Before the change of address forms.”

Mr. Grey never volunteered so many personal opinions; not in one go, not even as a sum over epochs of time. But something in the glittering eyes and determined stomp of Jodee Coats had compelled Mr. Grey to speak. He finally caught himself, and clapped his mouth firmly shut.

Jodee Coats looked unimpressed. She tossed the magma hair from her shoulders and said, “Thanks for nothing, Grey boy,” She stomped from the cube, into the hedge and its clickety clackety hubbub.

On her way out, Jodee Coats kicked a hole in Mr. Grey’s cork board cubicle wall.

Mr. Grey’s ticker tocked away in its pocket. Mr. Grey himself sat very still, and not very stiff. The cranes and cubicles passing overhead threw shade across his features, which struggled to keep an expression fit for stone. In the distance, Mr. Grey’s supervisor roared out another order. Mr. Grey felt uneasy about his conference with Miss Coats. He thought, perhaps, he should talk with his boss about Miss Coats, and tell his boss what Miss Coats intended.

First, however, the Notice needed re-pushing. Mr. Grey picked the ancient change of address form off the floor. He smoothed it back onto the metal table.

Mr. Grey had just finished conjuring the mental image of the Notice, when a gentle knocking at his cubicle wall announced the arrival of the day’s first real client. This one arrived exactly on time, according to Mr. Grey’s pocket ticker. Mr. Grey put the notice aside again and helped the client on his change of address journey.

The client complained at length, albeit in a meeker way than Jodee Coats. First, he griped about the length of time getting permission to move from Starharbor. Then he grumbled about securing lodging in the verdant capital of Wine Medo. He bemoaned about all the forms upon forms that he’d filed, and the forms he was filing now, and the protective cologne he’d had to buy, and how much of a farce was this whole process! This client’s beef lacked the tender passion of Jodee Coats’, but their frustrations were of a like character. Through the diatribe Mr. Grey sat still, nodded patiently, juggled the pencil/quill/highlighter between his ears and hands as the form demanded, and clickety-clacked away at his Word Machine.

Mr. Grey worked through the client’s forms, with less efficiency than usual. His eyes wandered repeatedly to the hole Jodee Coats had added to his wall with her shoe. He would look back at the client’s papers, only to find his eyes straying again, this time to the incomplete form laying in a corner of his desk, with her name written in his hand.

Mr. Grey eventually disposed of his current smarting client by directing him to another obscure, harshly-lit branch of the Starharbor Regional Justice Center. The client would have yet more parchmentwork to complete before the Justice Center was finished. Mr. Grey returned to the old address and the new Notice. If he could just get the copy done between clients, he’d have time to follow the roars through the hedge. He could go to his boss, Mr. York, before that man left for the day. He could warn his boss of a potential moat-breaker in Jodee Coats.

Alas, but Mr. Grey had many more clients left to endure that day. They filed, one after another, into his office. Some let fly their pent-up grievances, to vanish among the tumult of cranes, and the floating boxes, and the clicks, and the clacks. Some gave wondrous descriptions of the places they were going: candy-coral reefs they would see, jolly drifters they would drink milk with, secrets they would learn from sprawling graveyards of skeleton trees. Mr. Grey would nod along. He scratched his quill and pressed keys while they spoke. In breathless tocks between clients, he stabbed with piston-fury at the grooved keys, composing his new Notice in a blur.

He managed the task. He got his copy made before the last client left. When she did, Mr. Grey followed her out. He prowled the maze; he listened for the distinguished roar of the beast in the hedge.

Mr. Grey discovered, however, that Mr. York had already left for the day.