Stan removed the last remaining bolt holding the fabric-covered wall in place and carefully pulled the felt-covered panel away from the cubicle. As inconspicuously as possible, he carried the fallen prey to his work station in the hallway outside the large, cubicle-filled office area. Humming Maggie’s Farm quietly to himself, he placed the soon-to-be halved wall on top of a pair of sawhorses, the sacrificial altar.

Stan measured one edge precisely with a tape measure and put a dot 3.5 feet up from the bottom. Then along the other edge he made a similar mark. Using a black magic marker—what is so magic about it?—he connected these two points to define the cutting line. He imagined the cubicle wall screaming as he cut it in half with a circular saw, using surgical precision and the coldness of a seriel killer.

Reaching down to the floor, he picked up one half of the wall and tossed it atop a pile of similar carcasses and hoisted the surviving portion, returning it to the cubicle forest. The bottom halves always survived; the top halves were toast. Once the shortened wall was put carefully back into its original place, Stan replaced the bolts securing it to the also-halved wall to its side. Next he reached down to remove the bolts of the next wall to attack.

One by one, the cubicle walls were cut in half and re-raised. Stan had been working as a temp contractor at the Tunaki semiconductor manufacturing plant, forty-five minutes south of Seattle, for four days now and had single handedly clear-cut over a third of the cubicles in the office area. The site had recently been purchased by a Japanese firm who had a heavy dislike for the privacy afforded by American high wall cubicles. The engineers lucky enough to have desks on the far end of the room, which only bought an extra week or so of high-cubicle-walled luxury, stared with fear at the slowly approaching toppling of the cubicles. Their days of hard earned privacy were coming to an end, unless a nest of spotted owls could be located. Damn the Japanese.

Initially, Stan was working with another guy, Tony, that the temp agency had sent. While Stan took the job seriously and performed the task with razor-sharp accuracy, Tony didn’t seem to possess anywhere near even the low skill needed for this brainless job. He was a quiet guy but shared just enough about himself for Stan to gather that he had just gotten out of jail for some minor offense. It felt like Tony mentioned this to make it clear that he did not want to be messed with, by anyone. He screwed up the first four walls he cut and kept wandering off to the bathroom throughout the morning.

By lunchtime, it was obvious that Tony was drinking and getting quite hammered. They went to the cafeteria for an afternoon break, and Tony’s speech slurred as he rambled on to Stan about his lifetime of bad luck. Near the end of the day, Tony nicked himself with the circular saw when he toppled over while cutting a wall. The wound was minor, but the implications of operating a dangerous power tool while under the influence were shocking.

Their supervisor, Mike Turner, had been keeping a close eye on them during much of the afternoon and by the end of the day, in a gruff gravely voice, he called Tony into his office. Mike had a roomy seven-foot-high cubical along a wall, but the panel facing outwards towards the office area had been replaced with Plexiglas, bringing to mind Wonder Woman’s invisible airplane. After a short heart-to-heart with the boss, Tony left grumbling and did not return the next day.

“Watch yourself. They fucking spy on you here,” were his parting words to Stan.

Through the large picture window overlooking the parking lot, Stan could see his recently fired coworker wandering around amongst the cars. At first it looked like he might be up to no good, but then Stan realized that the more likely explanation was that Tony couldn’t remember where he had parked his car. Stan watched with amusement as Tony meticulously searched the parking lot in a chaotic, random fashion. At one point he tripped and went down, ripping the knee of his jeans. Finally locating his car, he got in and sped off. At the far end of the parking lot, Tony stopped and then slowly drove off the road into the pristine grass bordering the exit road. He spun his wheels, violently carving two deep trenches into the finely manicured company lawn. Clumps of dirt, sod, and rocks shot out from his rapidly spinning tires. The far end of the parking lot became littered with this debris; several windshields were cracked from the projectiles. His car crept forward slowly as the trenches grew longer. Then without warning, one of his front tires gripped the pavement, his car shot onto the road, and he sped away, never to return. One of the more impressive exits the plant had ever seen.

Stan returned to the cubicle forest and removed another cubicle wall….

excerpt from: An Open Universe

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