It was a silence adorned with movement, fingers fluttered, and eyes twitched while a concealed sun reached its zenith. Cole sat in his chair skimming through the numbers flashing before him. Now and again he would shift a number with a pointed tap, or erase one that seemed out of place. His new work did not feel complex, and its difficulty lay in overcoming the swarming boredom.
As he had first hoped, Cole was quite good at the work. Even if that work seemed to only be about shifting numbers around; an almost never ending puzzle of finding the right place for the right digits.
It was easy to zone out and mess up the task, but Cole had been perfecting the balance of focus and daydreaming. He no longer needed most of his mind to do the task; as his fingers moved mechanically through the air, his thoughts swirled.
Every day was the same, varying only by the meal he consumed during his break. Food was the one expense that Cole allowed himself to splurge. It was a common sight to see Mel shoveling a nutrient cube into her mouth, in a second, or to see Can absentmindedly sipping on a liquid meal while working, but Cole could not forgo the symphony of textures and flavors that real food offered.
Surprisingly, besides Mel and Can, Cole had not met any of his other coworkers, he would sometimes brush by them on the way to the bathroom, or in the breakroom, and still he did not know any of their names.
'Maybe, I should be the one to introduce myself.' Cole tilted his head to the side. It was just that whenever he saw them, they looked so disinterested, as if his words might jar them from their carefully crafted routine of boredom.
Cole frowned, remembering the green haired receptionist. It had become something of a game to try and figure out what the man at the front desk looked like. As he would walk to the elevator, Cole would glance at the employee trying to parse the individual's appearance. Some days the hair seemed greener, other days Cole thought he saw a prominent nose, or a wide smile, it was never consistent. Or maybe Cole just had a bad memory.
"Cole, you have a new directive for today." Cole blinked, and the numbers vanished before his eyes as he looked around. The light voice and massive shadow across his desk did not seem congruent, but Cole knew them to belong to Mel. Mel's hair was a soft purple that day, and strangely her arms were covered with sleeves that threatened to burst. While Mel's hair was rarely the same color, she never covered up the ropey muscles running through her arms.
"What's up Mel." Cole had grown to like his colleague over the few weeks. Even with limited interactions, he could always feel that she was present whenever they talked. It was a big shift from the others and sometimes there was a hint of small talk from the large woman.
"Can sent me, he said that he is assigning you to something different today. I don't know why he couldn't walk over himself." Mel's words petered into a grumble.
"Did you hear about the synthetic human ordinance?" Cole spoke up to keep Mel from getting too annoyed, some of the doorknobs were already on their last legs.
"No way that sees the light of day. We have such strict regulation on workers, there is no chance they will be allowed to make new humans. They are too scared after decimation of the robotic factories from years ago. How would synths even be classified?"
Sometimes it was easy to distract Mel. Cole smiled to himself as he left her pondering the idea of artificial humans. Can's desk was not far, it was no wonder that Mel had been annoyed by the floor director's reluctance to get up from his desk.
"Cole, good to see you." Unlike with Mel, Can and Cole were not any closer than the day they met; Cole knew there was no need to respond.
"The manager wants to see you, said something about a temporary assignment." Can blinked and observed Cole with one of his eyes, the other was likely still engrossed in work. Cole frowned as the light from the fake window reflected off of the man's glasses, Can never paid attention to anything other than his work.
"When should I go to the office?" Cole felt a tingle of nerves, he had never met or even caught a glimpse of the manager, and the way Can was acting meant that this was not an ordinary occurrence.
"The door to the office should be unlocked right now." Can turned away as he spoke, but the stillness of his eye betrayed the fact that it was still focused on Cole.
"Thanks." Cole spun on his heel and made his way to the single door in the office, entering the small hallway to take a new path to the farthest door that was never open. Cole had begun to think that there was no manager, and the mythical person was created to give Can more power. His other theory was that the manager never came into work.
The manager's door was not as worn as the rest of the office, the brown paint was not peeling and the doorknob had no marks of Mel's ferocious grip. Cole reached for the handle, but the cool metal did not turn under his hand. Instead, a soft beep echoed through the hall and the door pushed inwards.
Cole felt his heart pounding as he entered the room. It was dark at first, until the door closed behind him and a light flashed on, illuminating the small room. There was a desk in the corner and a curved sofa against a wall, otherwise the office was empty. No decorations hung on the wall, and the desk, that looked in much better condition than Cole's, was entirely empty. Actually the whole room was empty. As if no one ever used it.
Cole looked around again to make sure there wasn't someone hiding behind the desk or sofa. The room was entirely empty. As Cole began to panic slightly, wondering what he was supposed to do, the wall next to the desk creaked and split open. Through the opening Cole could see another hallway, but before he could get a good look, the wall snapped shut as a woman slipped into the room.
Her shoes made her a good head taller than Cole, but they had such large heels that Cole doubted she was actually taller than him. Her outfit was not the uniform that Cole saw everyday, it was shockingly different.
The manager was wearing a blatantly skimpy dress that barely made it to her upper thighs. It was made of a deep red and left her back and arms exposed as it tied into a bow behind her neck. The fabric did obscure all of the manager's most intimate parts, but it barely did the job.
Because of the lack of cloth, there was a lot for Cole to take in. Her shoes had enormous heels, but were otherwise a plain black material that covered her feet with a bootlike appearance. Her long legs were free from any sort of socks, but the right one was inked with a multitude of colors. Intricate tattoos of writhing snakes wrapped around her right leg, twining together as their tails knotted together at her ankle. The snakes shimmered in the light, their colors shifting between iridescent blues, greens, and yellows. Unlike her right leg, the manager's left leg was unblemished, besides a metal plate that she had not bothered to get covered with skin on her knee.
Her hips were slightly exposed, peeking provocatively out the sides of dress, and Cole caught a glimpse of a yellow stamp-like tattoo on one of them. Her shoulders were exposed allowing Cole to see the stark contrast between her arms. One was slender and unblemished with pristine pale skin, while the other was fully robotic. Made entirely of red metal, the robotic arm was almost as flawless as her left arm, with the occasional rivet or seam. It was attached at her shoulder, and a tattoo of a tree branch slithered from behind her dress, up her collar, and onto the arm. The black ink looked the same on her flesh and her metallic arm, a seamless mastery of inking.
Her neck was long and thin, but unremarkable when compared with the rest of her form, as there was no jewelry or markings. The manager's face was covered entirely with a plain mask that seemingly had no openings. Thick hair cascaded down along the side of the mask, a vibrant maroon.
Seemingly ignoring Cole's examination, the manager smoothly crossed her legs as she sat behind her desk. "As part of a new directive in the company, some new employees are given the opportunity to observe another division in the building." The manager's voice was not muffled by the mask, but it was artificially pitched and robotic.
Cole did not have time to ask a question, as he was still shocked by the sudden appearance of the manager, and the woman promptly continued. "Your work has been excellent so far, so you may choose what sector you would like to shadow for the next week." She lifted her hand and a list of names materialized stacked upon each other like the floors of the building.
Cole wanted to ask for advice, or at least clarification on what the different departments did, but the manager's posture indicated that she just wanted him to hurry and choose.
Flustered by the unique character in front of him, Cole randomly pointed at the name at the very bottom of the list. /A111 Management of Resources/.