Intangible - a short story

Arthur stood near the fountains of Highbury Square tapping the black screen on his Smart Comm. Standing under the tracks of the high speed monorail for shade, he was mostly alone, the square all but deserted in the mid-morning sun.

The hot summer morning served only to add to his depressed mood as he repeatedly tapped, shook and rebooted the electronic device that tethered him to the world.

The morning had started like any other, shower, dress, usual grey suit, two pieces of toast (margarine, never butter) and off to work. No standard goodbye to the wife this morning as she was staying with a friend for a much needed break. Break from what, he didn’t know?

No indication, in the elevator or on the train, that this would be anything other than a normal Tuesday morning for Arthur. Rigid adherence to schedules always brought him to his office door at 8:55, briefcase in hand, ready to offer his accounting services to a presumably waiting world.

Sole proprietor and only employee of Dawberry Accounting Services, Arthur treasured his little kingdom or more appropriately haven, and all the solitude and seclusion it provided for him. He took clients when it pleased him and turned down others when they represented excessive work or the possible expansion of his diminutive corporation. Arthur had all he needed. Growth and expansion were a pointless and unnecessary exertion of effort. Besides, he was profitable – quite profitable, even though he really didn’t have that many clients - but his bank account was always full, and he always had the things in life that he and his wife needed. Janice always had to have the latest fashions, even though Arthur frowned upon many of the outfits she chose. “You’re turning heads.” Arthur would say. “That skirt is just too high and I simply don’t see why that top needs to be cut so low.” Arthur was never ever jealous, it was simple logic to him – he had his wife, they were legally married – why does she need to advertise? That phase was over years ago! Her spending was insatiable, yet there were always credits in the bank.

The sun was already baking the square and the lack of people only enhanced a feeling of desolation, like an abandoned post-apocalyptic cityscape, sterile, hollow and soulless. Arthur expected a gust of wind to suddenly blow tumbleweeds across his path like the old West, or a crowd of hungry zombies to round the corner any moment.

Everything was working this morning. Arthur thought. Wasn’t it? It must have been, the elevator worked, the monorail let me on and dutifully removed two credits from my account. It must be a localized issue or glitch in the system.

Arthur had walked into his building that morning, on time as always, to find that the elevator would not respond to his summons.  Fortunately, the two flights of emergency stairs were easily navigated, but they only led to a locked office door and no response from his Comm. As with everyone else, his dependence on electronica left him without a single thought of what to do, frozen he waited for something to happen, or someone to come to his aid. He paced a little and tried to see inside other offices, an attempt to determine if others were having the same problem. But he couldn’t see anyone through the narrow frosted glass windows that were adjacent to all the office doors in his building. He had never looked before, never needed to, so he wondered if anyone actually worked in these offices at all.

He had no appointments booked that day, and even if he did, most were done by Video Comm these days. Nobody was coming to his aid anytime soon.

After dejectedly descending the stairs again he made his way past the auto attendant in the lobby, which made no effort to engage him, and back out into the square.

Now, at 9:45, a twinge of panic was bubbling in his stomach like the first plops in a pot of oatmeal. Now what? Who do I call? I can’t call! My Comm is dead. I need to talk to the Ministry, but which Ministry? He paced in a circle as a Mono Train screamed over his head. Ministry of Communications, Public Welfare, Accounting?  Maybe Ministry of Security or environment? He felt nervous. Once, as a child, he was lost in a Mega store. He had instinctively walked out to the parking lot hoping to wait by his parent’s car, back when people had cars, but he couldn’t find it. People passed him back and forth but ignored him. “Child should have a Comm Link on” one lady mumbled to her husband as she passed him. Arthur had cried then. He felt a bit like crying now. Not even a security officer in sight.

He brightened slightly at the sudden thought of his back-up device at home, in the drawer beside his bed - but how to get home?

The thought of walking made him nauseous. It really wasn’t that far but he had never walked before. He wasn’t even sure what direction he would walk. Isn’t walking for the poor? He thought. And there’s no poor in this section of the city.

The heat of the morning was already affecting him, his underarms felt damp, a feeling he detested, but to take off his grey suit jacket wouldn’t be proper. Arthur believed that sweat was for the working class. Sweat was something you did because you didn’t have an education, a profession, a position in the world. If you were nobody, then sweat was your only option. Arthur hated sweat.

Since there was no other option forming in his mind he reluctantly began walking, using the monorail track as a guide, convinced that he could come up with a better solution as he walked, or at least meet someone who could help along the way.

Mid town was a district of office towers, no homes, they were prohibited, and no shopping. Shopping was something you did from home; the only need to venture outside was for a rare treat at a restaurant, which was always located in the bedroom districts, never downtown. Most offices had catering services for lunch – Arthur had never eaten anywhere outside his own office for twelve years. Why would he? He wouldn’t have access to other people’s buildings anyway, so what was the point?

As he walked his feeling of isolation grew. Not a soul crossed his path; however, he frequently caught sight of a face or two peering at him from some obscure office tower. Had he become a curiosity? I am a normal person, a citizen. He thought. This must have happened to many people before me?

His back and neck were bathed in sweat; it seeped through his grey suit jacket and made an oval dark stain on his back and under his arms. “I’m ruining this suit.” He said out loud to nobody, more to hear the sound of a human voice than to protest his situation.

Not to worry, he thought, I will change when I get home.

Waiting for Arthur at home were 5 more grey suits - same style, identical in every way. He would often say, “Grey is the color of power, of intelligence. Gray matter displayed in suit form, to abate any professional concerns my clients may have with my competency or diligence. Grey is the color of accounting.”

He could see his building, it looked close but he knew it wasn’t. Eighty stories high it was easily spotted, but all bedroom buildings were that tall or taller, but that didn’t mean they were close.

He rounded a corner following a curve of the grey concrete Monorail track and happened upon a man sitting cross legged in a doorway with a paper bag, likely booze Arthur thought, and a grimy pillow beside him. Arthur stopped and surveyed the pathetic sight. The derelict had no Comm Link on and was therefore no use to Arthur. He walked on ignoring the pleading look from the vagrant’s hollow eyes.

Just my luck, Arthur thought, only human I meet is nonexistent, untouchable. Might as well have met a garbage bin.

The Mono Trains continued to speed by overhead. There are people in those cars, thought Arthur, people like me, at least like I was a few hours ago. He tapped his Comm Link in a futile effort to bring it back to life. He wondered if his credits would be removed today to cover his rent on the apartment.

He had walked for half an hour when the entry way of his building came into view just behind a Comm Tower that he had never noticed before - a tower that stretched to the heavens but still managed to hide in plain sight, grey and black and buzzing with life. Well that works, Arthur thought dejectedly as he glanced again at his Comm-Link, so it must be me.

The last five minutes to his building seemed like an eternity. He could see some people on their balcony’s, wide open platforms with no railings, perched precariously above the concrete ground – nothing between them and a free-fall except for the suicide bars, discretely tucked into the sides of each porch, waiting to spring into action like an old fashioned air bag, ready to catch a desperate soul or a disobedient toddler milliseconds before they fell to their deaths. Faith in safety systems was absolute, always operating in the background of everyday life. The Ministry thought of everything!

Arthur walked into the open air lobby of the apartment; he felt like he had just defeated the Trojans or climbed an impossible mountain. He had walked home.

He fully expected what came next, the elevators, cold steel with piercing red eyes above their frames, stared at him without recognition. Nobody is there they thought. Conflicting code tried to balance motion detector input against visual and Comm Link recognition software and came up empty.

Stairs won’t help me this time, thought Arthur. He wondered why they even bothered to have them in the first place. I’d rather die in flames, he thought, than run down seventy five flights to safety, much less climb the damn things. What now?

Serendipity smiled in the face of a young girl, school age, who approached the elevators to his right. The doors instantly opened welcoming the girl, without concern or judgment as to why she wasn’t in school at 10:30 on a Tuesday.

Arthur squeezed in beside her as the doors shut silently and the car began to rise with extreme acceleration that neither passenger felt due to the built-in dampeners.

The girl looked at Arthur suspiciously. She was keenly aware that he had waited for her to enter the lift before joining. She had heard stories of people, monsters, who had entered secure facilities without proper access. Mother warned her of these monsters all the time. Now she was riding with one.

The elevator rose silently, knowing exactly what floor the girl resided. The doors sprang open and she ran from the car, around a corner and down the hall. Arthur stepped out on the sixty eighth floor, very aware that the lift would immediately return to the ground floor. Seven floors to climb are better than seventy five, he thought.

The heat of the day had finally got to him and he succumbed to the desire to remove his jacket and toss it over his shoulder. It reeked of sweat and Old Spice.

At the seventy fifth floor he pushed open the crash bar on the emergency exit door and walked a few steps to his apartment.

He froze briefly at the sight of his door ajar. This isn’t right, he pondered, or even possible – but none the less a welcome sight since he had no idea how he would open the door if his manual override code didn’t work.

Shouldering his way inside he dropped his jacket on the floor beside him. The apartment looked much the same as it did a few hours prior; it was in kitchen/TV room mode, no sign of a bedroom just a small cubical entrance for a bathroom peaked out from behind a plastic plant in the far corner. The light was intense, streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling glass giving Arthur the sensation of snow blindness.

He walked over to the wall controls and punched in the code for Evening Conditions. Nothing happened. Of course!

How am I going to transform the condo to evening mode without the aid of motors and hydraulics? He thought.

He knew that the fold away room had the headboard situated at ceiling level when it was hidden. Arthur pulled an ottoman over to the area he estimated his night stand might be located and climbed up. Pushing away a ceiling grid he peered into the hidden storage that would expand into his bedroom on a normal day, simply by electronic command. He could see the edge of the bed frame and the night stand drawers.

Arthur stepped down, leaving the ceiling grid open and looked around for a suitable device strong enough and long enough to push open the night stand drawer vertically. Finding an antique umbrella near the front door he re-mounted the ottoman and poked it into the adjacent storage cavity, catching the drawer handle on first try and using the umbrella as a lever to wedge open the drawer, upwards towards the ceiling.

With all the contents at the back of the drawer, which was now the bottom of the drawer, he blindly reached around inside with his free hand examining each object he picked up until he felt the familiar outline of a Comm unit.

In one motion he removed the umbrella from the drawer handle and let it slam shut while jumping down to the floor, landing squarely to the wall, Back-up Comm Unit in hand.

With no delight or satisfaction he rapidly removed it from the protective case and pressed the orange activation button on the top.

To his relief it sprang to life, briefly going through its startup motions and then displaying a screen which prompted him to enter his security code.

Seven digits later Arthur stared at the message; Unauthorized user, access denied.

Fearing a mistake he re-entered the code with the same result. Then again, and yet again.

He stared blankly, as if the screen were the abyss. Doesn’t make any sense at all. They can’t both break. They never break.

He walked a mere three steps to the kitchen area and placed the Comm unit gently on the counter like it was a crystal figurine. Beside it sat a note. Not a customary note that may have been sent to his Comm device or left on the messaging screen attached to the refrigerator, but a real note. A white paper napkin with hand writing on it. In ink. Real ink.

His mind spun like a tea cup ride at a county fair.

He put his index finger on the paper and dragged it towards him, turning it as it moved so the writing faced him.

Arthur, it is with sadness that I write this note but you’ve left me no choice. I hate my life and what it has become. I hate us! By now you’ve realized you’re off the grid, unconnected, off line. It’s awful what I’ve done, but I don’t want you to ever find me. I’m sorry about all the money, but I need it where I’m going. David and I are leaving the country; you remember I told you of him weeks ago. I love him! He has also left his family and we will make a life together somehow. Before he left the Ministry of Communications he helped me take the credits left in the bank account, and the deeds to everything. I’m sorry, maybe you can start over, you are smart. To truly disappear he had to wipe us all from the grid, all of us, even you Arthur. We don’t exist anymore. I am sorry. Be well. Janice

Arthur slumped against the counter. He stared at the note and let his eyes defocus on the blue letters until everything was an inky blur.

By four that afternoon Arthur had transitioned to the TV viewing chair and had watched the sun disappear around the far side of his building. But not his building anymore.

This apartment belongs to the Housing Ministry again, he thought while juggling other realities as they popped into his head. The credits are all gone. Dawberry Accounting Services is gone. I can’t move, travel, eat.

Another hour passed as Arthur processed the meaning of Arthur. He came up empty.

At six PM he walked to the balcony doors and manually pushed the sliders to one side. The view from the seventy fifth floor was mostly limited to the seventy fifth floors of buildings that surrounded him. He watched two children play catch on their balcony, conscious of the tether attached to their ball so it wouldn’t be lost to the ground below. Suicide bars don’t catch balls.

Arthur’s bars never moved. Why would they? Nobody was there.

_______________________________

In the morning, a small crowd gathered at the base of the east end apartments. They were annoyed.

“Why on earth hasn’t this been cleaned up?” Said a middle aged woman in a bright pink skirt. “How long do we have to look at it?”

A man in a dark blue suit sidled around the carcass. “Strange,” he mused. “No security squad, no clean-up crew, not even a census registrar. Where the hell is the Ministry?”

“What Ministry?” said a lady staring at the body.

The man stopped and thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Any Ministry. This is gonna attract dogs and flies. This is not good.”

“Who is he?” Asked the pink skirted lady.

“Beats me,” said the suited man with an air of disgust, “Nobody wears grey suits anymore!”