A short man with an imperfect moustache pushed a broom across a concrete floor for what seemed like the millionth time. He could have believed he had been pushing the broom since the beginning of time and would still be pushing when it was all over, but he never complained, nor would he dream of complaining, nor would he even dream. Above him was a black ceiling that looked more vacant and empty than black except for occasional flashes that lit up only themselves before fading just as quickly, gone before they really had a chance to be there. Some lights had been burning since before the man had ever arrived with the broom, and some would burn long beyond him. Some hadn’t been there yesterday, and some would not be there tomorrow.
Surrounding the man were cubes, not with walls, but cubes of space lined up in all directions as far as he could see or had ever walked. Each cube extended into a hole in the floor and was as long as eight of the man’s steps, and he knew this for sure as he had walked past them endlessly, every day, as far back as he could remember. The sides of the cubes that extended above the floor were surrounded by a knee-high concrete wall topped by a wrought-iron railing another two feet above the wall. Each railing had a hook holding a clipboard that held seven laminated papers.
The cubes were in grid form; it was like standing on a waffle with endless depressions in the waffle in all directions. The Boss didn’t call them cubes but instead liked to call them squares. “It makes them feel local,” he often said to the man with the broom. The man did nothing more than sweep the floor that bordered the squares and never once reached inside the railings, but he would often walk close enough to feel that the air was much colder on the other side. There was no floor inside each square, just an emptiness, similar to the blackness above.
In each square there were various objects randomly scattered left, right, high, and low. They were mostly spherical objects, some clustered, some isolated and alone. Some were brilliant balls of yellow, orange, or white, and some were as dark as coal. Some were different shades of red and brown. Some slowly turned, traveled, or both, and some just stayed in one area of the cube as others sped by. Some moved so imperceptibly that the man with the broom couldn’t notice a difference unless he passed by again a very long time after. Objects would occasionally reach the edge of their cube and drop to the floor that ran grid-like between the countless squares. Then the man with the broom would sweep them away.
“Careful with the broom, Eddie,” said the Boss.
“Sí, Sir.”
“Did you sweep Gamma recently?”
“No, Sir.”
“We have a T-5 there, and it’ll be a T-6 soon. I thought maybe you had swept a little too hard.”
“No, Sir.”
The Boss held a clipboard that said “Duro 1638″ at the top of all seven pages. Some pages had line graphs and pie charts that updated themselves when necessary. On the front page was a box that had had “T-4″ in it when the Boss had picked it from its hook, but then it showed “T-5″ when he put it back.
“This one’s almost over too,” he grumbled through a tight jaw. He exhaled and huffed. “I’m running out of ideas, Eddie.”
The man pushed the broom a little more softly and bit his tongue as the Boss’s words echoed throughout the place for the zillionth time. Each time a square went T-6, the man had to wheel out the vacuum. Each time the man would study the debris while cleaning out the square, and he would mumble, “Too many fingerprints.” He waited, always waited for the Boss to ask him what he thought. He didn’t dare offer words unless asked.
“Softly, Eddie,” said the Boss just before he was gone.
The man didn’t think it was possible to sweep any more softly, but he tried as he thought about the one day he had swept too hard.
He had been pushing his broom past a square, Aarank 715, and two very bright spheres were moving towards each other. As they grew closer, their relative speed accelerated and their light was nearly blinding and beyond beautiful. He knew he wasn’t supposed to stop in one area, but he couldn’t look away.
As if hypnotized, he relaxed his hands, the broom slipped, and the handle slammed against the hard floor. Dust kicked up. He reached in panic, which somehow made everything like slow motion, trying to catch the one, tiny fleck that soared over the railing and into the square. He was about to reach in and grab it, but he remembered the alarm.
He watched the speck as it moved towards the floating spheres that the Boss had so carefully placed. Eventually it touched one small ball and changed its path so very slightly. Its new path gradually took it into the path of another. An incredibly long time later, much more time than the man could perceive, the Boss put a T-6 on the clipboard. Then the man wheeled out the vacuum more slowly than usual.
“Slower, Eddie,” the Boss started saying almost every time he appeared.
It was rare for the man with the broom to be sweeping nearby when the Boss was starting a new square and even more rare for the Boss to invite him to watch. A new grid was opening, a block of nine squares roped off with the Boss inside the middle square, like the center of a tic-tac-toe board.
“Thank you, Eddie,” he said when the man stopped his broom. There could no disturbances during a birth period. “Would you like to watch?”
“Sí,” the man said.
“Come, have a seat.”
Without lifting a foot, Eddie was suddenly in a chair only an arms length from the square in which a birth had begun. He watched as the Boss pulled random objects from the pockets of his white jacket, shaped and reshaped them, and placed them at his whim throughout the three dimensions of the square. Some came from the pants pockets, front or back, each pocket yielding a slightly different material that he shaped or mixed with something from another pocket until, in some way only known to him, it all felt right.
Occasionally, he’d observe two objects for a length of time and then pack them together to form something new. Some he’d polish until they shone, glimmered, or glowed. Some of those would hold their light for a very long time while others might fizzle out before their light could escape the square, and they’d crust over dull and cloudy.
Too many fingerprints, thought the man in the chair. His bottom lip twitched a distance less than the thickness of a hair in his moustache.
“Yes, Eddie?” asked the Boss.
“No no, Sir.”
“You wanted to say something. It’s all right. Go ahead.”
“No, Sir.”
“Eddie, it’s okay.”
The man looked down, thinking carefully before speaking because it was the first time he could recall that the Boss had said anything to him other than what he should or should not be doing.
“Señor, what if you took all of those things in your pockets, and you make one big handful, and what if you just toss them into the square?” He waited for the reply that didn’t come. “Just toss them in the air?”
The Boss waited. “And then what?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
The Boss waited. “Why?”
The man spoke the words he’d rehearsed a million times. “Just to see what would happen.”
The Boss waited. “Eduardo, nothing would happen.”
The man began to sweat. “How do you know, Sir?” The man felt very small. Before he could figure out what to say next, he was back outside the block of nine squares, broom in hand, and the chair gone. He turned and swept in the opposite direction from which he had come.
“Break time, Eddie,” said the Boss.
A short time later, or possibly a long time, Eddie was in a chair at a table in a mostly white room. There were no doors, no way in or out, except when the Boss wanted him either in or out. He noticed a glass in his hand, so he drank as much as he could because he could never be sure when a break would be over. He put down the empty glass, but one tiny drop was stuck in the whiskers beneath his nose.
Lentamente, Eduardohe thought as he passed a clipboard with 139121125-23125 across the top of each page. It was a square that the Boss had checked very recently, so recently that the clipboard was still swinging back and forth on its hook. On the first page it had “C-1″ in the box. In the middle of the square hung one ball, nothing else. Nothing moved, nothing shone, nothing spun.
As the man pushed the broom passed that square, he heard a very faint “pop,” and he looked back and tried to remember if he had ever heard a sound within a square. What had been a solitary ball had become billions of smaller ones. Some glowed, some didn’t. Some streaked around the cube in a big circle, some stayed put. Some gathered near others, forming little clusters, while some remained alone. The initial “pop” had caused the man’s head to turn so quickly that the tiny drop of water that had stowed away in his moustache had escaped and was now sailing into the square. Before he was aware of what had happened, it was already too late. Once the drop crossed over the railing to the inside of the cube, it immediately slowed. Its flight path went from a gentle arc to a very straight line.
The man’s hands began to shake. He wiped his sleeve across his dry forehead, although he wasn’t sure why. He watched for a long time, or maybe a short time, waiting for an alarm or something, but nothing happened. The drop cruised slowly past the outer objects of a cluster, barely missing one with assorted stripes and drifting close to one that held a very unique red color. They were so close that they leaned towards each other, feeling each other’s presence and trying to touch, but they passed too quickly, without a chance to meet. The drop’s path was slightly altered by that near encounter, and it wobbled slightly askew past a brilliant, fiery yellow-orange one. Some other object had gotten rather close to the yellow one and burned up into nothing. It emanated some strange rays that fizzled away some of the moisture in the drop, making it imperceptibly smaller.
Directly beyond the brilliant yellow ball was a rusty brown one that just kind of hung there, right in the line of the drop’s motion. The rusty one was about twice the size of the floating drop, and they were on a collision course. A smaller, half silver and half black object with tiny holes moved between the rusty one and the drop of liquid. The silvery one moved on by and cleared the way for an impact. Then it circled the rusty one and came back around again and again as if on guard, protecting the rusty one. It was barely out of the way long enough for the drop of water to get by and smack into the rusty one.
Eddie held his breath as the two objects touched. The drop quietly exploded into hundreds of tinier drops that stretched away from the object before an unseen force pulled them all back into the rusty orb. There was hissing as a gray fog shrouded the rock. The fog dissipated, leaving the rusty rock a little shinier. The man watched as a few cracks opened on it surface, and a red glow began to seep out until it covered the surface. It shaped and reshaped itself, sometimes bubbling and gurgling until another foggy cloud rose above it, enshrining it like a spherical halo, as the rusty rock gently spun and glided within its own great cube.
The man reached down for his broom, not sure of how long he had been staring at what he was certain would send the Boss into a verbal explosion. His first thought was to sweep the floor quickly and get out of there, but he couldn’t break from the voice that constantly reminded him to push “slowly.” He pushed the broom as far as the next square before glancing back, but he couldn’t find the rusty, cloudy ball. In its place was something with a slightly bluish-greenish tint, a color he could not remember noticing before in any other square.
As if everything the man had caused wasn’t enough, a tiny rock sped straight for the now blue-green one and smacked into it with enough force to interrupt it’s spinning speed for just a moment. Then another cloud grew out of it, covered it, and slowly faded away. After a few seconds of silence, it was just the bluish ball, the black and silver one running around it, followed by the reddish one and the striped one, a few others, and the brilliant yellow one. As huge and wondrous as they were, they were still just the tiniest specks among billions of other specks in one great cube.
The man swept past a few more squares, relaxing a bit after each and thinking about other things that he would never remember. He was then startled by the Boss’s bellowing voice. “Eddie! Eddie!”
“S-s-sí, Señor,” he trembled.
“Eddie!” The Boss cheered. “We got one!”
Article © Richard Voza. All rights reserved.
Published on 2009-03-16
