Down the Rabbit Hole

Disappointment threatened to swamp him. He was crazy. Someone had put him in an institution and he was imagining the cube farm, the silent preoccupied people, the colorful screens. The only real things were the four white walls and he was actually in a straitjacket. Or he was wandering around some giant man-made rat maze, perhaps observed, perhaps failing this test, failing all the tests.

“Hello!” he yelled, fear giving his voice volume. He began to jog down the aisle, arms out to either side slapping the wall, the cubicles, the wall, the cubicles. “Answer me!”

The industrial carpet, the fabric-lined cubicles all conspired to suck his voice into an abyss. The room was huge, and there was no echo, just the dead thumping of his feet on the rug. He ran until his breath ripped audibly from his throat and his chest burned.

“Dude!”

The voice from behind him made Jeremy damn near jump out of his skin. He spun around to see a short, dark-haired, square-headed guy in a shirt and tie and wrinkled khakis. He was built like a wrestler and stood with his arms out from his sides as if about to draw in a gunfight. It might have been aggressive except he looked he like might cry.

He panted as he took the guy in. “Are you the one I was just talking to?”

“I was gonna ask you the same thing! Where the fuck are we, man?”

Jeremy started to laugh—hysteria, doubtless—when the guy launched himself forward and he found himself being hugged tight around the waist.

Just as abruptly the guy let go. “Sorry, man. I’m just so glad to see someone. I mean, Jesus, this place, it’s huge, and I haven’t talked to anyone since I got here.”

“So all these other people can’t see you either, huh? How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know, man, days. One minute I was sitting in a meeting, checking my emails, and the next minute I’m like here, you know? It was okay at first, but now, I mean, what the hell, right? At least we got our stuff.” He gestured back into his cube and Jeremy saw an array of screens similar to those that he had. “I’d really be batshit otherwise.”

Jeremy’s breath was slowly getting back to normal, but “days” threatened to make him hyperventilate.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Brian. Yours?” He held out a hand.

“Jeremy.” They shook. “So how’d you get here, Brian?”

Brian’s face clouded. “Oh, man, it was awful.” He went on to describe sensations that were eerily similar to the ones Jeremy’d experienced.

“And you said you were . . . what, checking your email? On your phone?”

“That’s right. I just got this new Samsung, thing is fucking awesome. If I had it here I’d blow your mind with it. I’m talking hashtag-phone-gasm, right? I mean, I don’t even know what all it can do yet and I’m on it all the time. You know?”

Jeremy nodded slowly. “Did anybody say anything to you before you, uh, before you ended up here?”

“What do you mean? I was in a meeting.”

“I mean did anybody tell you to get off your phone, or ask you to listen up or anything like that?”

Brian shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. I was watching this video my buddy Ev sent, with this sweet chick in it wearing nothing but—”

Something from inside his cubicle dinged and Brian’s head whipped around for all the world like the dog in Up when it saw a squirrel. Brian turned without finishing his sentence and bent toward the screen.

“Brian,” Jeremy said, “did you see that other guy who popped up? Reddish hair? Looked annoyed?”

“Pay attention, boys and girls! Are you paying attention?” a female voice boomed over the cubicles. You could hear the smile in her voice but at the same time she sounded far from benevolent. “That’s why you’re here, boys and girls, to Pay. Attention. Get what I’m saying?”

The voice was getting closer. Jeremy glanced at Brian, who turned from his screens and looked at Jeremy with wide-eyed terror.

“What?” Jeremy asked. “Who is that?”

“Oh man,” Brian said, dropping into his seat. “Oh man. It’s her. Mrs. Hartz. Quick! Pay attention!” And with that, he turned back to his screens, hunching like all the rest of them, eyes riveted.

“Why? Who is it? What’s she going to do? Brian?”

But the guy was trembling in his seat, ignoring him.

Jeremy turned toward the voice. What the hell? What on earth could anybody do to them now? They were already in hell.

He watched the hall to see if she would come this way, and he didn’t have to wait long. She swung around the corner like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters—about eight feet tall with a spherical body clothed completely in red, from her dress to her hose to her sensible shoes. Incongruously perched atop her fire-engine red hair was a tiara that did its best to sparkle despite being outgunned by the sheer massive proportions of the wearer. With her smallish head, thin legs, and colossal torso, she looked like a gigantic walking aneurysm.