Lucid Waking

Archive for January 30th, 2009

Flowers and Chrome (Part I)

        The conference room’s long mahogany table was cluttered with duffels, coats, and purses. Cases of food and water and garbage bags had been slung on top of the luggage, stopped from sliding off by the rolling chairs lining the side of the table. The walls were a pale blue; though it was meant to be a hopeful color it succeeded in adding to the monochrome monotony of office life. The ceiling had seven small lights, all set to a dimmer switch near the main door in the front of the room. An expensive projector hung from the center of the ceiling and pointed menacingly at a spot under the rolled up white screen.
        Positioned in various spots against the wall, under the table, and in the isle lay fifteen young women. The soft murmur of breathing broken only by a few delicate snores gave away their presence in the dark room. Leah slipped out of her sleeping bag without unzipping it and stood up, trying to gage the distance to the door without being able to see it. Unluckily for her, she was positioned closest to the far wall as possible and her bladder was starting to protest her indecisiveness. She cautiously put out a toe, as if testing the temperature of water, and gently stepped down onto carpeting. She repeated the process until she reached the door, proud to have not woken anyone, but all the more feeling the urgency in which she needed to reach the bathroom. She slipped out the door to the quiet office area, past several rows of cubicles, through glass double doors to the main lobby. The closer bathrooms for the employees were locked for the night, but the office staff that had allowed her and the other girls to stay had graciously left the public bathrooms in the lobby open.
        The cold tile pricked her bare feet as she carefully pattered across the open space in front of the receptionist’s desk. She didn’t like how open the room felt and how anyone who walked by the glass front of the building could see her in her pajamas. Luckily no one was out. She opened the door to the bathroom and stopped, leaving the door open so that the light flooded out to illuminate the face of the large clock behind the desk: 12:55. She turned swiftly into the brightly light public bathroom and blinked several times to adjust to the light.
        She smelled the odor of burning tobacco before she saw it and figure out who it was before her watering eyes could focus. Melanie was leaning back against the wall, her eyes half closed watching Leah adjust to the light. She remained like a statue, her hand barely clutching the cigarette leaning over a glass ashtray she probably brought herself.
        “Are you allowed to smoke in here?” Leah asked scornfully.
        Melanie moved to stand upright and shrugged. “There’s a fan right there,” she said pointing at the ceiling. “I don’t see the problem.”
        A toilet flushed and the stall door opened. Susanna stepped across the room and turned on the water neatly. “I don’t think you’ll get her to stop if she’s catching breaks while everyone else is asleep.”
        Leah entered the stall and said nothing.
        “You’re too goody-goody, Suzy, to understand.”
        “I’m not judging you,” Susanna said ripping a length of paper towel to dry her hands. “I’m just saying that Leah shouldn’t be so surprised.”
        “I’m not the only one who snuck in cigarettes anyway.”
        Leah exited the stall and moved to wash her hands. Melanie exhaled a bit of smoke upward towards the fan and then looked down at her slippers. Susanna smiled at Leah and redid the ponytail in her short blond hair.
        “It’s all right,” she said to neither girl in particular. She reached for the door and exited the bathroom with a soft creek of the hinges. Leah ripped off a piece of paper towel, dried her hands, and left in the same sudden way into the darkness.
        She stood outside the bathroom door while her eyes adjusted. As she stood, she could hear a soft whirring noise from a short ways off, which she quickly dismissed as an errant heating unit. The sound off the office doors opening echoed through the lobby and Leah barely saw the outline of her friend slipping through them. She moved to follow Susanna, but stopped as a glint of bright blue light caught the corner of her eye. She snapped her head in that direction but saw nothing. She stood in her tracks, staring at the spot, waiting for the glint of light again. Finally, she heard a click and then the whirring got louder.
        The next thing she knew, she woke up, and something very heavy rested on her chest, pinning her down. Two blue lights were looking down at her, very much like eyes. They blinked off and on. She reached out a hand to the object on her chest and touched warm, humming metal. She tried standing up, but the weight on her chest pushed hard against her.
        “Who are you?” a male computer generated voice asked her.
        “Leah Hirsch,” she said. “I’m staying with the rest of the girls in…” she paused not wanting to give any location away to an entity she didn’t know was friendly or not.
        “Why are you here?” it asked.
        “We’re traveling to collect plant specimens for a university’s greenhouse collection.”
        The lights turned and she saw the blue beams aim for the ground near her shoulder. “It is good to have a purpose. Would you agree?”
        “What do you mean?”
        “I was built as an information unit, so I know everything that there is to know. Nature always triumphs over technology. She will be there long after technology has stopped working. So why am I here if not to die?”
        “We all die,” Leah said. “And please, get off me.”
        “I can not do that,” he said.
        “Why not?”
        “If the guard robots see you here they will kill you.”
        “What? I was told we were allowed in the lobby.”
        “You are not in the lobby,” he said with a tint of guilt.
        “Then where am I?”
        “Please do not be angry. I just wanted to talk to you.”
        Leah sighed. “Isn’t there anyway we can talk where I am comfortable?”
        The machine whirred for seconds that felt like hours. Her chest was aching under his weight and her skin itched due to uncomfortable heat of working machinery. The floor under her smelled like cleaning chemicals and was stiff from being walked on. Finally the weight lifted and she was pulled up to her feet. A hand grabbed hers and led her around a labyrinth of hallways to a room. The robot shut the door with a click and turned on the lights.