Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #024
Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #024 – The Atrium – Chapter 07 – Incremental Progress, Part II
As promised, I’m releasing some of my upcoming book bi-weekly as part of the Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday series here at SBS. I don’t expect it to make sense…at least, not at the moment…but that’s okay. Putting it out here publicly is intended to be motivation to keep me writing it, and that’s all the purpose any of it needs to serve. Hopefully, if I get lucky, you’ll enjoy it in the process…that’s the best case scenario. At the moment, I’d predict that things will likely change with the order I put these things out in…and what reads as “chapters” now, might end up becoming pure prologue, if it even ends up making the final cut for the whole story at all. Regardless, if you find yourself being one of the few that wanna follow along and see where this goes, I can at least promise you that reading what is posted up here at the homepage will provide you with extra insight, details, and ideas that probably won’t even end up being in the book…so perhaps, by reading these postings at the start of each month, you might very well know more about what I’m writing than the publisher will by the time things are all finished.
I truly hope you enjoy, and thank you for reading.
– Jer @ SBS
The Atrium – Chapter 07 – Incremental Progress, Part II
June 5th, 1988
“Alright Sarah and…” Kelly quickly looked down at her clipboard and squinted her eyes tighter to see the other name listed on her paper so that she could call both people into action, “…Mitchell. My name is Kelly. If you could both stand up and follow me, I’ll take you down the hall to the observation room.”
Of all the things that Kelly had seen go right in her time at the office, compliance with this first step always seemed to go off without a hitch. She asked for two names to get up and move, and that is exactly what would happen, every single time. Of course, things could always go wrong from there, but that was all stuff well beyond her pay grade. Her task was much more simple than anything that would come afterwards – all she ever had to do was get people to follow her down to the observation room, and in the times where it was necessary, she’d schedule more for appointments later on. As to what the people where supposed to do on the other side of the door once she closed it and returned to her station at the front desk of the office, honestly, she had no idea and never felt the need to ask. Everyone had their own jobs in this world, and so far as Kelly understood, each was to do their own to the best of their ability. To bog down her mind with the details of someone else’s job seemed like it would threaten to take some of the space required to do her own, and therefore, she never asked about anything else other than the simple things she needed to know in order to do her job in the best way that she could.
Sarah and Mitchell rose from their chairs in the waiting room, gathered their things, and followed her through the door into the hallway. At first glance, it seemed like it was completely endless. A corridor of massive proportions that continued to go on and on and on. Characterless in plain white, with no art or anything hanging on the walls, were it not for the doors that lined the sides, there would be nothing to see whatsoever. The clicking of Kelly’s heels sounded like they traveled up and down the hallways with them as they walked, but beyond that, there was no sound to be had. There was no small talk, but none of the usual awkwardness that came with three strangers surrounded by their own silence either. It was as if they were each sustained by their own sense of purpose, and it was all they needed to be satisfied.
After what seemed like at least two or three minutes of walking down the corridor, they finally reached their destination. With a scan of her clearance card, a click of the handle, and a push that allowed the air inside to make its audible escape into the hallway, Kelly swung the heavy door open and invited both Mitchell and Sarah to come in and take a seat. “You’re free to sit wherever you like,” she said. Kelly wasn’t much for humor and jokes, but this was her moment, and generally speaking, it was her favorite part of the day. As Mitchell and Sarah entered the room, they saw two tiny desks with what looked like archaic computer screens sitting on top of them, and exactly two chairs, both facing the same direction towards what looked like a window that showed a room on the other side. Other than that, the whole place was just as characterless and plain white as the hallway had been, with the exception of a row of mirrors in behind them lining the wall behind their backs. Sarah looked at Mitchell, Mitchell looked at Sarah, both with an expression that seemed to imply that if either had a preference for where they were about to sit, now was the time to speak up. Neither of them did, and so they both took a chair of their own and sat down, with Mitchell on the left, and Sarah on the right. Kelly watched them, and noted that their choices were made the same way that just about everyone’s were – Mitchell had gone into the room first, and naturally kept moving across the room which meant he ended up in the chair furthest from the door. Sarah, who entered in last, ended up in the closest desk. It was all predictable to Kelly, who had already led countless people down that hallway to this very moment many, many times before.
From there, it was simple. Kelly’s job was already essentially done. Just the quick recitation of a slight introduction, and she’d be on her way back to her desk at the front of the office, waiting for them to finish up so that she could clock out and go home for the day. “Okay,” she began, “you’ve probably noticed that there are two computers in front of you.” Kelly chuckled to herself once again at her own humor, careful so as they wouldn’t notice she was even making a joke. There was literally nothing else to see other than the two computers, so of course Mitchell and Sarah had noticed them – how could they not? “These computers are here for you to take your notes on. It is expected that you do. It is imperative that you do. The very success of the program completely depends on your feedback and the information you gather. Once the task has officially started, your computer screens will automatically turn on, and you’ll be able to type out as much as you see fit throughout the process until it is finally done. Once it is over, your computer will automatically save any work that you’ve created, save your progress, submit it to the main office, and your screens will then turn off. Do you have any questions?”
Sarah, who looked like she was capable of lighting up any room she was in with a mixture of strawberry blonde hair, fairly thin frame, and an eager smile, put up her hand much to Kelly’s dismay. Questions were rare, but they did occasionally happen. It confounded Kelly, every time, because what else could she have explained? It wasn’t like she had left anything out of the instructions, so what purpose could a question even serve? Still, she understood her job included answering any questions that they did have.
“Yes. I see we have a question on the right side of the room, from Sarah. What do you want to know?”
“Thank you Kelly. I would like to perhaps understand more about what we’re here to do? What kind of information are you looking for, and what’s going to help the company succeed in the long run?”
“Yes,” Kelly said. “Good questions. None of which need answers from the likes of little ol’ me, I assure you. We’ve been running this program for years to my knowledge, and I’ve yet to need to supply any of our guests with any additional information than I’ve already provided you with. Your task is to observe, to record what you observe, and that is all. As far as I understand, the process is crystal clear from the moment your task officially begins, and I’m quite confident that will be the case for you both as well. Are there any other questions that you’d like to ask, or are you both ready to get started now? Mitchell looked at Sarah, who nodded as to affirm that Kelly had given her an answer that satisfied her question. “Okay then, on behalf of the company, we truly thank you for your service, and we wish you the best of luck in your task. Your success, is our success.” And with that, she closed the door and disappeared out of sight. The lights in the room slightly dimmed, which seemed to make the room through the glass ahead of them appear to be even brighter. It looked like a somewhat standard type of doctor’s office. Nothing too fancy, but it did have a row of cupboards, a couple of chairs, and some overhead lighting equipment; the kind most often used for surgeries and dental work. Mitchell wondered whether or not that was the kind of detail he was supposed to be observing, since there was nothing else happening yet.
On the other side of the glass, a door popped open and a hand reached on the inside of the wall to feel around for the light switch. Flicking it on, everything became much more illuminated around where Sarah and Mitchell sat. As they watched a young nurse wheel a middle-aged man in on a stretcher, the lights on the computer monitors on them finally flicked on in an dark glowing green. As the nurse began to prepare the room for some kind of surgery or medical procedure, Sarah and Mitchell could hear their individual computers booting up and prepared for whatever might come next, but stayed focused on the nurse and her patient ahead of them, careful as to not miss anything important that might be happening that could potentially need to have been observed. Finally, once they knew their computers were running as they should be and the programs were ready to start, they each looked down to see a simple message had popped up in the green text onscreen, to inform them of what they were each to do next.
Sarah’s screen read: Please observe the scenario in front of you and record all the details that you can see until the procedure is officially finished. You are not to discuss your findings with Mitchell.
Mitchell’s screen read: Please observe Sarah observing the procedure and record all the details that you can see until she is officially finished her notes. At all costs, Sarah cannot know you are observing her.
They both turned to look at each other kind of awkwardly after reading their individual messages, and laughed slightly nervously, each assuming that the other likely had been given the same task. Mitchell thought that it was best to document this event right away, and made sure to log that Sarah had laughed with him after receiving the instructions, and then went on to continue to ironically observe that she was observing. Sarah was in fact, observing, and wrote down every little detail she could think of from the way that the room looked, to the nurse leaving her patient on his own for a moment, to the doctor coming in, and so on. She noted that the doctor looked incredibly confident and like he had taken part in whatever procedure was coming up countless times before. Mitchell didn’t really know what he was supposed to take notes of. He tried to not miss anything that could be considered important, so he ended up writing about everything he could see. He wrote about her strawberry blonde hair. He wrote about the fact that she continued to smile throughout the entire course of taking notes. He wrote about the silence he was experiencing as she took those notes, except for the fact that he could hear the rapid click of the keys on the keyboard, which suggested to him that she was eager to fulfill her duties in the task she had been given. Clickity clack, clickity clack – it seemed like she never ran out of things to type, whereas Mitchell felt like he was continually struggling to figure out what was the next best thing to take notes on. He could feel his face redden slightly as it flushed with a pang of embarrassment, knowing that his screen was likely going to practically be blank by comparison to all the work Sarah was doing. Still, he felt like there was no other option than to contribute the meager details he could provide.
From behind the glass, they could hear the doctor say to his patient, “Can you hear me clearly?”
Sarah looked up for a moment and turned to Mitchell, almost asking him if she should be recording the quotes, then remembered in real-time that she wasn’t to discuss what she was doing with her partner in this project. She turned her head back to the screen, and wrote in what the doctor had said, in addition to the patient’s somewhat stammered response. Mitchell recorded that Sarah had recorded that. He couldn’t escape the feeling that his side of this project was completely and utterly fucking useless. While he did his best to keep doing his task and taking notes, he felt like he kept drifting off from a lack of anything that seemed important to comment on. What more was there for him to say about any of this after fifteen minutes had gone by? Sarah had now made more notes than there were notes that had existed only moments before? Did someone out there really need to know that? All Mitchell really knew was that he had to keep going. It was if he felt programmed by a sense of purpose in all that he ever did, and he’d be damned if he was going to quit on this project when he never quit on anything else. Still, he was quite sure that the look on his face couldn’t hide the natural disdain for the sheer pointlessness of the task he was engaged in right now, and he couldn’t wait until it was finally over. For a brief second, Mitchell wondered why he and Sarah had such noticeably different reactions to their tasks.
“That’s fantastic to hear George,” they heard the doctor say from the other side of the glass. The doctor, Derrick, Mitchell thought he said his name was, continued to talk with his patient for a few minutes. It wasn’t too long before they shaved his head right down to the skin. The nurse was handling all this, but at first it was the electric clippers, and then she used a normal Bic razor to do the rest. Soon enough, the patient was bald and shiny like a human bowling ball, and she began drawing lines around the shape of his skull. Sarah was typing furiously at this point, just trying to keep up to all that was happening in the greatest detail she could provide. Mitchell noticed that she was beginning to sweat through the side of her dress, and acknowledged the heat himself, though he wasn’t quite feeling it to the effect she seemed to be. He continued to face forward towards the medical procedure, while keeping the side of his eye firmly affixed to everything and anything that Sarah was doing. Typing furiously. Making no noticeable mistakes. Taking in all the information that she could, and making sure she committed as much of it to the screen in front of her, as well as her memory, just in case. Mitchell wrote down that she had an impressive work ethic, and he certainly wasn’t wrong – Sarah seemed to be catching every possible detail. It was more than impressive really; it was outright superhuman and Mitchell was in awe of her. From the moment the screens in front of them said go, Sarah had went, and she continued to launch her keystrokes at high speed. It was to the point where her fingers moved at a blur from the corner of Mitchell’s eye, but that made it easier to observe her in a way – her fingers never, ever stopped moving. The more she typed, the sweatier she became, and the more ridiculous the smile on her face seemed to be. He laughed to himself on the inside about how her fingers were running some kind of marathon on the keyboard, and that she must’ve been trying out for the freakin’ Olympics at the pace she was going.
And then all at once, she stopped. Which felt like it made everything else seem to come to a halt as well.
Mitchell put his attention back towards the glass window in front of him, and saw that the nurse had left to go get the doctor. The patient, George, laid out flat on the stretcher slab, seemed to be on pause for a moment, waiting for the next step in his procedure calmly with his arms laying still at his sides. Sarah was sitting at the keyboard with his fingers in the ready position, waiting for something to inspire them to move. Up until now, even the absence of something worth noting would have been something she’d have quickly noted in her file, but she just sat there like how a car gets stuck in the mud & needs a push.
At first it was fairly amusing, and of course, Mitchell made sure to document this strange moment of Sarah’s behavior in his own file. After a couple of minutes without her moving an inch though, he started to genuinely worry about her. How long was this going to go on for? Was he the only person that was actually moving right now? He looked around the room as if some kind of help would be revealed, only to find the white walls surrounding him to be of no assistance, and just as useless as his face reflected back to him in the mirrored wall behind where he sat. “Okay,” he said out loud, “this is starting to get a little weird, isn’t it Sarah?” She was as still as a mannequin, but more like a threatened animal in nature trying not to be seen and ready to engage in fight or flight mode at a moment’s notice. She didn’t turn her head or even seem to acknowledge that Mitchell had said anything at all. It was all so very strange and unexplainable. He was just about to get up and go over to her desk when the doctor finally entered the room to officially begin the procedure. Mitchell thought that their movements might bring Sarah back to life, but she still sat motionless. The doctor adjusted his lights, checked in on his patient – still absolutely nothing from Sarah with her fingers creepily hovering just above her keyboard.
Mitchell wondered if he was supposed to say something right now. He could go back out into the never-ending hallway and find Kelly. He could tap on the glass window in front of him and get the doctor’s attention. He could simply yell for help as loud as he could. That was what Sarah needed, right? She was completely non-responsive. Her eyes were wide open, she was still smiling, and seemed like she was ready to start typing at any time. Was this some kind of weird joke that was being played on him?
When what appeared to be some kind of radial saw was put to George’s head began to spin and cut into his skull, sending flecks of blood in all directions, including onto the glass on front of them, Sarah inexplicably snapped right back into action. At what looked like it was double or triple the speed she was already typing at, with her smile as wide as ever across her face, it appeared to Mitchell that it was like she’d experienced some kind of bizarre lag time, and was now determined to get every detail caught up as quickly as possible. Sarah was punishing the keys on the keyboard, unapologetically pushing them all at a ridiculous pace, which looked like a total blur to Mitchell, staring intently out of the corner of his eye. He made notes of his own on everything he was witnessing at a mere fraction of her speed. Once she had finally caught up with where the doctor and his patient were at within the procedure, she stopped typing for one second, slowly turned her creepy smile towards Mitchell to stare directly at him, and he became so strangely frightened that he dared not look back at her and stared straight forward at the surgery in front of him. Only when he eventually heard the sound of her taking notes resume did he dare glance at her from the side as he had been before. She continued to type, and said “I know what you’re doing over there Mitchell” as she did. When she said that out loud, he was more than startled; it was like he felt the whole room get twenty degrees colder and he was certain that he began to shiver. Sarah typed and typed and typed, and kept saying “I know what you’re doing over there Mitchell” over and over and over. It was absolutely terrifying to Mitchell, but since he had no general idea of what he was or wasn’t supposed to be recording in his notes, he didn’t think to question the strangeness, just observe it. He was scared as hell. Sarah looked entirely out of her mind, and continued to pound at her keyboard until Mitchell was sure he could see he fingers turn purple at their ends. Then he was positive that he could see blood starting to smear and pool upon the keys, though he was so terrified to look at her by this point, that his tiny side-eyed glances would be measurable in split-seconds only. A splotch of blood from her fingertips splashed and landed on the tile floor between them. “I know what you’re doing over there Mitchell. I know what you’re doing over there Mitchell. I know what you’re doing over there Mitchell,” she continued to shout, and right as he stood up to declare he’d finally had enough of whatever it was that Sarah was doing, she again stopped completely, in mid-sentence. “I know what you’re…” She just trailed off, out of nowhere. Mitchell looked to his left and saw that the doctor had finished his procedure and the nurse was now in cleanup mode. The surgery felt like it lasted seconds, but the intensity of the room he was in felt like it had gone on for hours. Could it be both? he wondered.
A message appeared on each of their screens that read: Thank-you for your participation! It has been greatly appreciated. Your observations have officially been recorded and sent. You are now free to leave.
Sarah turned to Mitchell and got up out of her chair. “That’s all? she asked, like she hadn’t seemed fully possessed only about a minute earlier. “I dunno about you Mitchell, but I’m not really sure if I did that correctly. Between you and I…I’m not really the most observant person, you know what I mean? Most days I feel like I’m in a battle to find my shoes so that I can just go about my day. I guess I did the best I could, but yeah…it’s hard to know if anything I managed to write down would be considered relevant.”
“Yeah,” Mitchell said back to her, his eyes firmly affixed to her face which was saying one thing, but he was completely sure that if he was to look down at her bloodied fingertips it’d be an entirely different story altogether. “I’m sure your best is probably exactly what they were looking for here, Sarah.” With that, he opened the door to the hallway, and she scurried her way through it. He took a last look at himself in the mirrored glass at the back of the room, adjusted his collar just slightly, and then closed the door behind him as he made his way into the bright white corridor. What an odd experience this whole visit was. He tried to think of any other time he’d been through something similar, and couldn’t recall anything that was even close. Then he tried to recall how he ended up applying for this temporary job recording his observations, and that seemed like it was equally cloudy in his mind. Mitchell was certain there would be some kind of path that led him here, but was damned if he could think of what it was.
Sarah’s heels clicked quietly up ahead of him as she walked down the hallway. He felt no pressure or remote inclination to try to keep up to her, rather, he was relieved that this was likely the last time they would ever actually see each other. Whatever happened in that room was going to stay there, and she would be free to go on and live her crazy life however strangely she wanted to live it. That was just fine with Mitchell as long as it didn’t involve him, or as long as he didn’t need to observe her weird behavior.
And though he didn’t know it at the time, he was right – that was the last time Mitchell ever saw Sarah.
