The Bricks of the Tower

“Every day, every day,” The Servant, Cells

Larry Coberg had dreamed, and it wasn’t of work. For this he was thankful. Larry Coburg worked at Choude Gabs Inc.; there it was his sole real duty to burn paper. He would sit at his desk, push the blue button for the paper to exit the nearby chute situated above every desk on the fifth floor of the office building, and then when the pristine and white paper, completely devoid of human markings of any kind, Larry would then press the red button, this button would then open a door beneath the bin where the paper was piled. Quickly, the paper would fall and tumble into the mini incinerator installed beneath Larry’s desk, just like every other mid-level Burner at Choude Gabs Inc.
Day in, day in, day out, day out; Larry would drive in his car to work, take the same route, talk with the same people, and take the same tram up the same tower to do the same job, again and again and again, for the fixed rate of just above the level of retched poor man, he was just “poor man”.
Larry would dream every night, and day dream every day, about the same things. He would fantasize through his Burner duties about the upcoming break or lunch. Either that or about any of the number of his female co-workers, he would feel momentarily ashamed of these thoughts but would block them out with an addict’s sense of entitlement. Larry never asked where the paper came from and had only the faintest idea where the ashen remains went after he was through with them.
His dreams had been different. Not sexual or of free time, but of a hole. A giant gaping hole situated in a vast valley completely barren of any human presence. Canyon-like with jagged peaks and glorious colors cast off by a harsh sun and unsympathetic rocks, the valley was something magnificent and hopeless at the same time. Larry had dreamt of being there, and not knowing much else of the land except that he was there, he was alone, and the only power he had that could possibly compare with the grandeur around him was his ability to choose, to choose for himself, what happens next.
But that had just been a dream. Larry Coburg dreamed often. Bright glorious colors were not usually what decorated them though. More often than anything the colors and objects of his job were what made their way into his subconscious. Even when he dreamed of having sexual relations with Cindy, one of his fellow Burners, it was always in the office. And he would always be wearing his starched work shirt and she would always be wearing her pants suit. It was depressing in a way, but Larry did not see it as thus. To him it was just something that was.
He had been thinking of his dream and work. Only one seemed real. Larry was at work.
“Larry…Larry?” Horace Green meekly asked from over the top of the divider separating his desk and incinerator from Larry’s.
“Hmm? What’s going on Horace?” Larry responded.
“Oh, it’s n-not much you see, I was just wondering…”
“Yeah? What’s going on?”
Horace stuttered as he always stuttered, completely unsure of himself. Shifting his glasses on the bridge of his nose, Horace bought himself some time as he refocused the lenses.
“What are you doing after work?” he asked.
Larry pressed the red incinerator button, condemning more paper to destruction.
“Nothing I guess, just go home, eat some dinner, nothing spectacular,”
“You’re not going to the jazz…thing…the jazz thing at the Moon Dust Bar?” Horace asked, distinctly curious. Larry shifted in his chair. He scanned his own memory for the reason why Horace would bring up jazz to him. It then occurred to Larry that upon first meeting Horace three years ago, when he first started working for Choude Gabs Inc., he had mentioned off hand that he enjoyed jazz.
“I didn’t know there was some kind of jazz thing at the Moon Dust Bar, how did you find out?” Larry asked.
“Oh, you know, I hear things,” Horace said while playing with the bridge of his glasses again. “So, do you plan on going?”
“Well I, I have to think about it,” Larry said, pushing the blue button and flooding his desk bin with a new wave of ivory white paper. Larry was thinking about what his evening would be normally, had he not been offered this invitation. He would go home and he would drink. He would drink as much alcohol as he could (it being Friday and work on weekends being only for people who wanted to move up in life) and would wake up some time during Saturday afternoon, hung over and wanting only to clean himself up and collapse into sleep again. This prospect, even after three years of doing it, did not depress Larry, it was again, just something that was.
Horace slowly receded back behind the desk divider and resumed his paper burning. For a time there was no sound in the air save for the rhythms of paper shuffled and paper burned. Back and forth, back and forth, the smell of ash being pumped out by the incinerators built in output vent that sucked out the filthy air and pumped it to the company knows where.
Larry adjusted his tie, and wondered if this moment was the moment he should attempt it. Leaning back and craning his neck around the desk, Larry looked as far as his vision could carry. It was then he saw her approach. Cyndi Alexis walked into the building in a flourish. Her face was sharply beautiful as was the rest of her. In her eyes was a piercing quality that could reach quickly and grasp the very soul of a person in a vice of pure shame or sweet ecstasy. Sometimes both in Larry’s case. Larry saw her walk and ducked his head out of the range of her piercing gaze, hoping and praying that she hadn’t spotted this time, just like every other time he had done it.
It was strange, how completely his mind and body seemed to be encased in this office building. When one’s job can have such a far flung influence as to rain shadows in the corridors of the mind, and bring the wants and needs of a man crashing and chained within the nest of cubicles and copier machines, is this something to be feared, despised? To Larry, as annoying as it was to repeat the adage, it was just another factor in his life that just was.
Right at that moment, like a bell ringing in his chest that sent pulses and sensations running through the maze of his being, Larry decided to stand up.
“Hey Horace?” he asked.
Horace was stirred from his comfort zone. If Larry didn’t know better he would swear that his words had actually physically hurt Horace.
“Yes, what’s up Larry?”
“I think I’ll meet you at the Moon Dust,”
Horace then had an unreadable look on his face. Larry sat back down in his seat, oddly aware that a few of his coworkers were staring at him, Cyndi included. Looking into the embossed logo of the button marked “Burn”, Larry pressed it and felt his world momentarily ignite with the blank sheets of industrial grade paper. Just as quickly, he saw his reflection in the Burn button’s counterpoint, the “Paper” button. He noticed his face, usually dead pan but now with the faintest of smiles on his face. In one instant he was awash again in white paper torrents, and in another, the papers were cast out of existence.

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