You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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Time began…
The Notice of Not Existing nestled at a formal angle atop the sleek metal cubicle desk. Above it, a shadow slid. A dry right hand with square fingernails took the notice in its clutch. The hand slid those boxy keratin talons beneath the enveloping girdle of sealing stamps. All the while, the right hand’s left-built twin drummed the round keys of a clickety-clackety word-machine, pausing only once to take command of the full range of letters. Each hand operated with complete independence from the other. Each performed its task with mechanical efficiency. The mind governing the hands ran both the typing job and the opening job with computational familiarity.
The Notice slipped from the envelope for the first time in epochs. Its text cowered under the harsh light of office-lanterns. A pair of eyes, embedded in a face, attached to the hands - by way of arms, torso, and neck - settled on the words. Eyes, face, neck, torso, arms, hands, and all biology attached to them, belonged to one Mr. Grey.
Mr. Grey’s features suited his name. His little mustache was grey. His eyes were grey. His skin had a greyness in its pallor. Each of these features exhibited perfect neutrality during the reading of the Notice. The grey eyes punctured each word, and kept jerky, tockwork rhythm with the typing stabs of the left hand.
That left hand, however, gradually lost its independence. As the shuttle of the grey eyes flicked from word to word, moving down line by line, the shuttle of the word-machine decelerated click by click. The left hand full-stopped at the exact moment the eyes pierced the last word of the Notice.
Mr. Grey pushed away from the metal desk. He stood straight, walked from his corkboard cubicle, and easily escaped from his department’s Cubicle Hedge. The two chief characteristics in his stride were: a rigid posture, and the mechanical step of a wind-up tin soldier. Indeed, his grey eminence extended past his face and hands and skin. It suffused his movement. And his dress. His robe was flat grey, down to the stitches. His shoes matched his robe. His undershirt was more of a conventional starchy than true grey, but that article too, had more ‘cloud’ than ‘sun’ in the degree of its bleaching. Even the office-lanterns, with their heavy, humming glare, surrendered before the obstinately matte complexion. Neither shadow nor light altered the shading of Mr. Grey. The grey bled into his very expression, which showed nothing of excitement or joy. Neither were cruelty or sorrow painted on his features. Mr. Grey’s expression was simply, stone. The Medusa and all her scaly locks, attacking a man utterly divorced from his soul, couldn’t cut a stiffer sculpture.
With the Notice still held in the dry right hand’s grasp, Mr. Grey stepped down a long corridor, past the cowering office-lanterns. His feet echoed ahead of him with perfect rhythm. Two sharp corners, two more long halls, and a latched iron door, brought him to the building’s exterior. A rogue gust left by The Gaunt, Brooding, Hungry Wind tried stealing the Notice, and pulled on Mr. Grey’s robes and hair. The dry left hand drew a pair of earmuffs - grey, of course - from a pocket of the robe. With ears secured, Mr. Grey marched over a metal catwalk, closer to the gloomy clouds above than the grimy streets below. From the catwalk, he stepped onto the cheese-grater floor of a scaffolded, skeletal, latticed-metal tower: the array of office balloon-elevators.
The balloon-elevators operated, not on one giant balloon, but on many tiny ones. The inflated bags floated above the elevator cage, each with a bright flush, like inverted droplets of blood. They floated at odds with Mr. Grey’s grey mien. He didn’t seem to mind.
Mr. Grey stepped into the cage of one elevator, the only one ready at his floor. He closed and barred the door. He turned to the adjacent cage-wall, to the collection of pistons, valves, and levers which operated the lift.
Mr. Grey reached for the first knob. The action was mechanical, a signal for other mechanical motions among the elevator’s thorny machinery. A specific number of blood-drop balloons would pop, and the elevator would drop to the Parchmentwork Mines.
Mr. Grey stopped his hand short at the sound of hasty feet clanging on the catwalk. Mr. Grey glanced back the way he’d come, ticking his head sideways a dozen degrees. The grey eyes skewered a familiar person - Ms. Maysey - rushing at Mr. Grey’s elevator cage. Ms. Maysey reached the cage, exhaled a soundless hello, and wrenched open the iron door. She crammed herself in beside Mr. Grey and took instant control of the knobs and levers.
Small, stretchy blood bags filled with rising gas as Ms. Maysey twisted knobs and flung switches. The lines attaching the balloons to the heavy metal cage stretched, until taut and ready for ascent. Only a security bar stuck in the tower-wall prevented a rapid, upward flight. Before yanking loose the bar, Ms. Maysey checked herself. She turned to Mr. Grey, and asked, was he going up as well?
Everything descriptive of Mr. Grey thus far would suggest he answered with an impersonal, to-the-point, and truthful, “No.” The Notice, shivering in the Wind’s gusty clutch, directed Mr. Grey to the Parchmentwork Mines. Down he must go to reach those lower realms. One would expect a short, sharp, unfeeling response in the negative to Ms. Maysey’s question, perhaps with an immediate correction of direction.
On receiving the question, however, Mr. Grey’s face transformed entirely. These were not the half-lidded grey eyes of intense apathy. This was not the flat line of mouth, buttoned up tight, and unlatching only to give necessary, truthful statements. Where had the robotic posture gone? What had become of the hands, which were no longer so dry? Who were these foreign characters which had supplanted Mr. Grey’s family of features? This posture, far from being stiff, leaned! Mr. Grey’s arms lifted the grey hands involuntarily, as if from want of purpose. The hands themselves were, in point of fact, damp. Still grey… but damp and grey! The thin line of the mouth beneath the little mustache opened and dared to steal a slight breath; a rhythmic operation normally belonging to the nostrils. The eyes changed the most; neither lidded nor apathetic, but wide and bright.
A startlement of the highest order - a paroxysm of surprise - infested every outward feature of Mr. Grey. The tense strength of his aspect fell, crushed beneath the pollution. Mr. Grey hadn’t anticipated this scenario; an interaction. With another person! Mr. Grey; that intimate familiar with the regular operations of pencil-pushery; that man who wore his grey persona so masterfully in the face of the inanimate sundries of his daily existence; faltered, before another person. Even one as mild and earthy as Ms. Maysey.
Mr. Grey did not say, “No,” in response to Ms. Maysey’s asking if he was ‘going up’. He fumbled his words, tossing them in his breath for a moment, and finally said, “Oh, sure…”
He almost followed it up with a smile. A smile! On the face of Mr. Grey! Did he mean to counterfeit? No… Mr. Grey almost made a genuinely friendly expression. A smile would have been awkward indeed, in that grey face. Awkward for Mr. Grey, stuck in the thick jelly of unfamiliar conversation. Not so awkward for Ms. Maysey, she being entirely occupied with a pocket of her robe during the alteration in Mr. Grey’s appearance. Most awkward for the smile itself, which would have realized instantly it had no business taking up residence on the face of Mr. Grey. The smile would have recognized the impropriety of its new accommodations and, consequently, left without notice.
Fortunately, Mr. Grey did not smile.
Ms. Maysey and Mr. Grey braced themselves. They unlocked their knees as cats in the first stage of a pounce, and wrapped their fingers around the nearest cold grate of metal. With her free hand, Ms. Maysey yanked the fastening pin from its lock. The balloon lift surged violently upward, exulting in liberation. The connecting ties between the blushing balloons and the metal cage went slack for a moment. Mr. Grey and Ms. Maysey received a vigorous up-and-down shaking. The Notice, still trapped in Mr. Grey’s freshly-dried hand, yelled parchment curses as it whipped in the surge. Ms. Maysey’s hair squeaked as it bounced, being, as it was, a curly nest of wood-mice.
Gradually the elevator settled down, as did its contents. Mr. Grey recomposed himself, returning to his pre-question aspect. Ms. Maysey’s hair-mice scurried back into a voluminous bob; some observed the cold air with water in their inky eyes, while others warmed themselves at the scalpy hearth.
Ms. Maysey’s hands darted through the plentiful folds of her puffy, corduroy robe. She drew forth quills, slips of parchment, and several treasure purses, returning each item with a shake of the mousehair. She finally smiled when - from an off-the-beaten-path pocket - she pulled a flint, a striker, and a wooden pipe. With too few limbs to engage all three objects at once, she passed the pipe to Mr. Grey, bidding him take charge. He pinched the pipe with two fingers, using the same delicate handling one might adopt with a venomous spider. Ms. Maysey, meanwhile, struck over and over. She sent curtains of sparks singing over Mr. Grey’s dry hand. Every so often a spark struck the pipe’s bowl, but never with a flare of ignition.
While trying to light the pipe, Ms. Maysey’s main set of eyes found the Notice in Mr. Grey’s other hand. She nodded her whiskery hair at the Notice, and said, “Got a complex, spiderweb-ish letter to rewrite up at Central Migration? Is that it, Mr. Grey?”
Mr. Grey wished to keep the Notice of Not Existing from Ms. Maysey. Or at least its contents. The text would reveal his true direction; they’d both be embarrassed. Mr. Grey said, “A formal delivery, Ms. Maysey.”
She smiled, and continued battling the blowing air for dominance of the flame. She went on, “But reallytruly, it must signify. That they gave it to you, someone of experience? If it’s regular pencil pushery, I’d file it for you. But only if that were okay! Only if you wanted, of course.”
“I won’t impose,” Mr. Grey kept the notice folded, but brandished it with a mechanical flick of the wrist, as though in emphasis. “This one’s for the top floor sirs and madams. You wouldn’t want to waste your whole day walking floors, would you?” Mr. Grey tucked the notice into a pocket of his own robe.
Ms. Maysey hit the striker hard, accidentally showering Mr. Grey’s robe in sparks. She blew hastily on the scorched fabric, though it was unnecessary in the rising lift’s breezy air. She apologized, then said, “It just gets me so cross. I don’t speak ill of any single person - indeed, how wretched I’d be! Finding I’d spoken ill of anybody - but the days where I’m cast as messenger girl, and end up riding balloons up and down and up and down all day, and run along corridors on every floor, well those days I work long past my shift. Sometimes it’s so far into night that the plows have stopped, and I end up wading jelly all the way home. Does that sound right? Just so some sir or madam, or some other department, doesn’t have to retrieve their own parchments? Not, I mean to say, not that the top floors don’t have important jobs! I find their effort admirable. Only it just doesn’t seem… entirely… fair. You understand?”
Mr. Grey said something noncommittal. Ms. Maysey’s pipe finally caught, and a tiny vapor trail wafted from the bowl. The breeze yanked the smoke into the adjacent emptiness of sky. Ms. Maysey thanked Mr. Grey, and at last took her pipe.
She’d just touched it to her lips, when The Gaunt, Brooding, Hungry Wind entered the air. Following her gusts, The Wind had tracked the smell of tobacco to their rising cage. In a show of childish spitefulness, The Wind snuffed the pipe.
Ms. Maysey shoved the pipe back into Mr. Grey’s hand. She renewed her striking showers of embers and turned a distressed face in the Wind’s direction. She said, “Are you trying to poison me?”
The Wind said, “Uh, check your own habits, tree-mouse-lady. You’re the one sucking fumes from a knotty old tube,” The Wind was in one of her poesy moods; she tossed her voice like clothesline laundry; billowing, low tones.
Ms. Maysey realized she’d spoken sharply in her haste to relight the pipe. She was one who gave ground at the first sign of an argument. Mr. Grey felt no great surprise when Ms. Maysey returned with, “Oh dear no, I never meant to accuse you,” she struck another shower of sparks on Mr. Grey’s hand, adding to the pattern of tiny scorch marks. Ms. Maysey didn’t notice, and Mr. Grey thought it awkward to bring it to her attention. He said nothing. Ms. Maysey went on, “You don’t mean to say I’ll catch poison from plain pipe smoke?”
The Wind shook the elevator scaffold dramatically. “Everybody knows dark clouds carry fever. Plus, it’s probably hurting my own air, second-handedly.”
“My physician prescribed it thougggghhh! He said pipe smoke helps avert vent poisoning.”
“Sounds like all our existences. Ended by garbage fumes or thistle fumes,” The Gaunt, Brooding, Hungry Wind sighed in mournful cello notes.
This information distressed Ms. Maysey. She gave up putting fire to Mr. Grey’s hand and took back her unlit pipe. She ran a shaky hand through her mousehair. Several rodents squeaked indignantly.
No one spoke for several tocks. The Wind summoned the music of the balloon elevator by rattling the cage, rubbing the balloons together, and generally acting like a pest. She rummaged in their robes, cutting coldly into their skin and bones. She tried to get at the Notice in Mr. Grey’s pocket. He hastily stuffed his scorched hand in to keep the parchment trapped.
The Wind said, “Keeping secrets Mr. Grey? I watched that Notice, you know. Kept it safe in the Sunshine Post.”
Ms. Maysey, remembering the notice, chimed in. “Oh yes Mr. Grey, do tell what’s written.”
Mr. Grey tried tucking the rest of himself into his robe. It might have worked with Ms. Maysey’s puffy apparel. Mr. Grey’s was strictly business, however, and didn’t go in for that type of recreation. He drew his personal pocket ticker to buy himself a moment; an out-of-place action, since the balloons couldn’t pull any faster or slower. Finally, he said, “It’s nothing too important. A formal Notice of a situation adjustment.”
Ms. Maysey laughed, but with a muted, nervous pitch. The wind’s comment on smoking medicine had upset Ms. Maysey. She said, “I believe it. I do try not to express myself in a disagreeable way, since that might make others disagreeable, which wouldn’t agree for anybody,” she paused, carefully checking the air for fumes, breathed, then went on, “but it does sometimes seem like they make me do an awful lot of busy work. Wouldn’t you say?”
Mr. Grey never put his opinions that strongly. He said, “I’ll bet a cozy fire’s a comfort for you, at the end of such days?”
“It’s more than a comfort; it’s a necessity!” Mr. Grey thought he’d diverted, but Ms. Maysey said, “Go on then Mr. Grey. Show us the Notice.”
Ms. Maysey and The Wind watched him expectantly. Mr. Grey saw no avenue of escape. He drew from his pocket the Notice of Not Existing. It would reveal his downward course, towards the Parchmentwork Mines, and make both Mr. Grey and Ms. Maysey uncomfortable.
Mr. Grey was just unfolding the parchment, when the balloon air equalized. The cage stopped before Ms. Maysey’s floor. She forgot the notice, knocked the locking pin in place, and flung open their cage. She said she’d hear about it later and rushed off, her face furrowed by health concerns. The Wind also departed. She rushed after a flock of clouds which had broken loose from a gathered storm.
Mr. Grey relaxed, which meant no visible change to his cut-from-stone countenance. He took measures to prevent a second interaction like the one just survived. Instead of using the control panel and deflating the necessary number of balloons by that mechanism, he disengaged the locking pin and took out his pointiest quill. Mr. Grey reached overhead and stabbed at the cellular mass of bright balloons.
There was precedent for this manual method of hastening a balloon elevator’s descent, provided it were done correctly, with a conservative stab. Mr. Grey - whether some remnant fluster varied his mechanical movement, or whether some remnant gust from The Wind forced his arm - did not do it correctly. Mr. Grey made a rather radical stab. He hit many small balloons, when he meant to hit few.
The clotted mass popped in a gunfire burst. For a tock, friction held the cage in place. Then a last rattle shook the scaffold, and the metal box enclosing Mr. Grey plummeted.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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I really liked the section with the Wind - it's so strange and a really has the feeling of a fairy tale or dream.