The Worker was winding his way down the stairs, intent in getting out through a lower door, but the way was already blocked, and wouldn’t accept his visitor’s pass anymore. Apparently, the Thief had figured out how to restrict his movements. Despite screwing his workplace up something awful, this Thief was smarter than he looked - he’d grasped the nuances of the workplace faster than expected.
The Worker wouldn’t be able to use the same trick twice. The restoration of his identity could wait. The only thing on his mind now was survival. He had to get out of this place before it was too late.
He was making his way downwards when he detected movement at the bottom. The Doorman from the front entrance was gradually coming upstairs. This was problematic. If he was caught like this now, there was no way to explain what he was doing in a highly-secure location clearly outside the legitimate boundaries of the building. He tried to get through another way, but access through the lower floors was still locked.
There was no other choice but to go back the way he came. Fortunately, the Doorman’s motions were laborously slow, giving him time, but going up was much harder than going downstairs. As the Worker passed the floor he left, he saw the smug face of the Thief through the window, giving an air that said, ‘I’m gonna getcha’.
With a dwindling lack of options available, the Worker made his way to a communication hub in the stairway out of sight of the Thief’s field of vision. He checked the clock. This would require split-second timing.
The Doorman opened the door to the stairway, allowing the Thief passage. But he couldn’t simply make his way down - that wasn’t the way things were done here. He had to convince the Doorman first.
“What did you call me up here for?”
“You may not know it, but you unintentionally let a saboteur in this building. He made a mess out of my work area, and almost escaped.”
“I knew he was trouble the first time I saw him!”
“I have his card right here, and it has your signature on it.”
“I had nothing to do with that!” the Doorman backpedalled, vehemently denying any trace of his involvement.
“There’s no need to trouble yourself. I’m not going to report you. I’ll deal with the matter myself. All you have to do is stay here, and make sure no one gets past.”
The Doorman seemed dubious at first, then figured this would be easier than actually making the effort to go up and filing a report later, which was just what the Thief wanted.
Before the Thief went through the stairway, he’d taped a monitor flat against his head, that was directly facing the Worker’s monitors, showing what all the Amazing Greys were seeing. The Thief monitored the Worker’s current location. What was he trying to do? Reach outside help? Hopeless. He’d take care of him long after anybody could come around.
On the upper stairway floor, the Worker had managed to make contact with the Driver’s radio, and send a signal to his house, directed to his Daughter’s room, which sent the cryptic message of, ‘Page 47, 2nd poem.’ The task done, the Worker made his way further up to the only door that wasn’t locked, the very top.
Upon reaching the roof, the Worker edged near the edge and looked out at the view of the City. The Worker hardly had time to admire the surroundings. All around him were mirrored reflections of Amazing Greys, from the walls of the workplace to the large flat screen before him, capturing every action occurring in front of them for whatever unknown purpose. And the City was full of them.
Their discomforting presence would mean nothing if records of what would happen to him were never noticed by anyone who could influence things to his advantage. They’d seen countless disturbing things, and never acted on any of them. His death would be just one more statistic.
To that extent, the Worker had taken precautions leading up to this moment. He’d taken in the available time allowed, and the Thief distracting the Doorman gave him a few more precious minutes. He calculated how long it’d take to climb up, setting the timer for the recording, and giving himself leeway to allow the message to get out. And he’d planned to say some confrontational words to the Thief that would trigger the desired response. However, what he hadn’t taken in account was just how out of shape he was, and found himself still gasping for breath.
At that moment, the Sleepwalking Daughter got out of bed, and made her way to the dresser, and was slightly woken up by the rope attached to her ankle. The rope was tied to the post of her bed to prevent her from wandering off too far. Still in her sleep-delirium state, she reached across, her fingers brushing the spine cover of the book, nudging it close enough to grab, opened up to the relevant page and started reciting the first of four stanzas of the nonsense poem:
“Yesterday...”
The Worker got up on the ledge, perilously close to the edge, trying to distance himself from the doorway as far away as possible. If he was trying to make himself inconspicuous, it was a failed attempt, as he was clearly visible right in the line of sight. “Nowhere to go now!”, the Thief announced, arriving at the top of the stairs.
“...there...”, she continued, concluding the second line.
The Worker had intended to make a convincing argument towards the Thief in this specific spot at this specific time, stalling with ‘Can’t we talk about this?’ but the trek upstairs had taken too much out of him and he was barely able to breathe any coherent words out. In the distance, the bells tolled, signalling the end of the day and the start of the next.
“...again...” in the middle of the third line.
The Worker held a palm out, hoping to halt the Thief’s advances, but he kept striding closer, full of malicious intent. And why should he worry? Hardly anyone in the workplace was paying attention to the Amazing Greys, access to their records was heavily restricted, and the Doorman was preoccupied. “No one will even notice your absence. I just have to get rid of you. All my problems will be over once you’re gone!”
“...away.” she said, finishing the last stanza.
At that moment, the Worker was pulled back into the wall by some kind of magnetic force and melded onto the surface of the Amazing Grey, and became a reflection. The Worker and Thief both looked surprised at this unusual occurrence. The Worker turned his 2-dimensional hands over in confusion, trying to make sense of this new reality.
The lie that was intended to target the Thief had been aimed at the Worker instead. Taking advantage of this, the Worker started running, making his way along the corridor wall towards the stairs. The Thief tried to stop him, but how can you stop a reflection? He slammed the door shut, but the Worker slipped through the crack between the hinge and door.
The Thief tried to track where the Worker was now, but for some reason, he wasn’t showing up on the monitors, despite what his eyes saw. He didn’t even register as a glitchy image. This was an inherent flaw of the system. The Amazing Greys recorded everything that crossed their line of sight, but they couldn’t see anything that moved along their surface. Trying to see him was like trying to see the interior of your eyeball.
The Thief raced down the stairs, knowing that any attempt at catching up was a lost cause, but wasn’t going to give up after getting this far. His enthusiasm was renewed when he saw the Worker struggling down below. The Worker had stopped in his tracks, stalled by the blockage with no reflective material to travel across. He anxiously looked around, looking for an alternate route, only to see all other paths barred and the Thief’s frenetic downward pace had relaxed to savour the moment.
In a fit of inspiration, he stopped looking left or right, up or down, and simply looked straight ahead... and found himself reflected on the reflective wall opposite where there was a clear path, and continued his way down. The two of them resumed their madcap race downwards, and was only cut short when the Doorman got in the way.
“Stop him!!” the Thief called out.
“Stop who?”
“You’re letting him get away!”
“No one’s getting past.”
And the Reflection slid down the remaining floors, slipped through the space between the doors and escaped out to the outside world.
So, as a result, the man who knows the inner workings of the Government is wandering about outside, and the man who manipulates the system without fully understanding how things work is left running the place. Which is why things are such a mess. Both of them have been deftly manipulating things to their advantage, each trying to oust the other, knowing that if they ever confronted each other again, it would ultimately mean their demise.
There were two cats from Ulthar
Who couldn’t stand each other,
Thought there was one cat too many.
So they fought and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats, there weren’t any.
“Hey!” the Complainer cried. “What about my problem??”
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