“Do anything nice last night, Richard?” It was one of two standard questions that Anne would ask as I arrived at my desk each morning. This option was slightly preferable to the other possibility, which was an inquiry regarding the ease of my journey in to work. I considered various possible answers. a) “I wrestled with some of the eternal questions of existence, particularly the problem of evil in a universe supposedly created by an omnipotent, benevolent God.” b) “I took various controlled substances and talked rubbish with my friends.” c) “I masturbated furiously whilst looking at pictures of young women in various states of undress.” d) “Not much, just a quiet night in, really.” All of these were approximations of the truth, but after a moment’s thought, I decided that Anne’s enquiry would best be served by d). Sometimes, for the sake of politeness, I would return the question, but I invariably knew what she would say. She would tell me what she had cooked for her husband, what she had watched on telly. Occasionally, there would have been a phone call from her son, in which case I would be treated to a rendition of the latest news of her baby grandson. This morning, I couldn’t face it, and stayed sullen. I coughed, choking slightly as a blast of her perfume crossed the office. It was floral, soapy, grandmotherish with an apricot tinge. She always struck me as slightly unreal, with something of a robotic quality about her. In some of my more bored moments I imagined her as a replicant, an android sent to infiltrate human society for some sinister purpose. No, if some advanced alien intelligence was going to create an imitation human, they’d do a better job. I kept having to stop myself asking her “Are you real?”. She seemed devoid of consciousness, beyond what it took to stay alive. She was perfect for her job, utterly lacking in outward signs of imagination or intensity. She was probably a big wheel in the Newbury Park Caravan Club. To her, everything was nice, except the things that were not so good. Do people like her fill their minds with trivial niceties in order to stop themselves asking the big questions? Or do the big questions just never occur to them? I suspect the latter. So many people live inside a vacuum penetrated only by work and television, seeing only the possibilities that are presented to them. They plough a singular furrow between home and work, home and work, home and work, and the shopping centre on Saturdays. Maybe they’re happier that way. I certainly can’t imagine that Anne ever suffers from existential angst. Even just the small questions would be enough. If once, just once, she were to ask why GF32 forms had to be filled in, what the point of sending these memos around was, that would be enough to make me accept that she and I were of the same species. I couldn’t understand how she could bring herself to care about her job. In the vast majority of jobs in our economy, the primary skill is the ability to suppress any glimpses of imagination. Keep quiet, keep your head down, keep plugging away, keep destroying any individuality you might once have had. People like Anne are perfect for these jobs. Society as we know it would cease to function without them. Lack of imagination is the glue that holds modern post-industrial society together. Or something. My amateur sociological observations were interrupted by the arrival of Caroline with some work for me. Caroline was the departmental administrative manager, and she would always take great care to make it clear that her career was on an upward trajectory. She was the kind of person who networked, and she would talk ballpark figures with alarming regularity. She had a dozen buzzwords for every situation, and she wasn’t afraid to use them. She was quite attractive, in a scary ice-maiden kind of way, but we lived on different planets. Her disdain for me was clear. There was very little to be gained by spending time talking to me. She had recently arranged for her desk to be moved closer to one of the directors, and was engaged in a none-too-subtle campaign to make her abilities noticed. She gave me a look that suggested I’d allowed my opinion of her to escape. I went around the corner to the photocopier, hoping that I didn’t look as bad as I felt. This was one of my preferred tasks, as it gave me a legitimate excuse to get out of my chair for a while. I had to run off thirty copies of the minutes of a meeting. It was a mindless task, as most of my other duties were, and on occasion it induced familiar feelings of underachievement, but there was something oddly pleasing about it. I watched, partially hypnotised, as the hint of green light moved from side to side under the glass, and saw the sixty crisp sheets of A4 come chuntering out of the side of the machine. They had a satisfying warmth, like freshly baked bread or clean towels; something comforting and maternal about this pile of identical sheets. I was more than half tempted to press my face against the stack, feel its warmth against my cheek. I stopped myself in time, before anyone had the opportunity to observe me nuzzling against the minutes of the November meeting of regional group heads. There had to be something better.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
Annajanska