Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

You’re Only Sleeping

Illustrated by XENIA RASSOLOVA

The beauty of an office space is criminally underrated. People always focus on the harsh, fluorescent lighting, the hive-like conglomeration of cubicles, and miss the stunning view of the city, sprawled out like an anesthetised body, that the huge windows afford you. They miss the way your chair learns the contours of your back, the way an office- clean, streamlined, unobtrusive- is the most perfect expression of the modern world. And all of this can be further condensed into the ubiquitous, the omnipresent, the omnipotent ballpoint pen.

Yep, I’m pretty sure of it. Working in an office is as close to a paradise as I’m ever going to get. Sure, there’s Buddy across from me, but that’s… fine. My pen scratches away with a life of its own, and the faint buzzing of the lights make it seem like we really are in a hive. Busy worker bees. Buzz buzz.

“Hey man,” Buddy calls, leaning back against his chair, all curly blond hair and blue eyes. He looks like he walked out of an ad for “the happy office man that YOU can be too!”, complete with an air of generic niceness to him that somehow grates. Kindness is always better appreciated when it’s unexpected. His eyes crinkle as he casually twirls his red pen in his left hand.

I lean back in my chair, lifting my eyes to the white ceiling. The tiles run along in a uniform pattern, spotless and brilliantly white, until they crash into the beginning of the enormous windows to my left.

“What,” I answer flatly, letting my gaze linger on the view of the sky-scrapers and inky blue sky before returning to the papers I need to finish before the end of the day. I pick up my own blue pen, feel its soft grip and solid weight in my hand, and click the top a few times, just to hear the sound. Clickclick. There’s no way Buddy is going to keep me from being Employee of the Month for the… however many times it is now.

“Have you heard about the Chinese proverb? The one with the butterfly?”

“Is that the one with the flapping of wings and the tornado?” No, don’t roll your eyes, even if Buddy is pretending to be “deep” again. Before the proverbs, it was inspirational quotes about reaching for the top and being the very best you can be. Ironic, coming from the guy who seems to spend most of his days flicking elastics at people or talking to me.

“Nah man. It’s about how this guy, this Chinese guy had a dream about a butterfly. He dreams about the butterfly, with its bright wings and its happy little life, and then he wakes up and he’s a man again. And he wonders whether he’s the butterfly dreaming about being a man, or a man dreaming about being a butterfly.”

My hand pauses, not quite finishing the quiet flourish of an “s”. I think back to last night, to this morning. I think about waking up in a cold sweat and reaching to feel my shoulder blades, expecting to feel the dusty silk of wings. Buddy smiles harmlessly.

“You’re an idiot Buddy,” I reply firmly, shaking my head. “Butterflies don’t dream.”

Buddy smirks, hums, turns back to the empty glow of the computer screen. His eyes look flat, almost hollow under the shade of his brows.

The shriek of my alarm. My hand flops about like a speared fish before smacking the top of the clock and cutting of the eardrum-piercing screaming. It’s weirdly cold in my room for a summer day, even with the blinds open. Get up, make coffee, fry an egg, toast some toast. I can do all this with my eyes closed, but it’s nice in the kitchen. The floor tiles are so clean and white, the matching appliances gleam. Golden light streams through the blue curtains, and outside the trees are a brilliant green, a green that is new and excited like a little kid scampering about in an amusement park, ignorant of the fact it will be closing soon. A butterfly flits past the window and I shake my head, smiling.

The office door squeaks slightly when I pull it open, and the elevator is cramped. It’s too hot, too uncomfortable, and even though I’ve been working here for a long time now- years, probably- I don’t recognize a single face. Shoulders pulled up to my ears in an effort to take up as little space as possible, my head drawn downwards so that all I can see are everyone’s shiny black shoes. The air slithers angrily about the cramped space like a caged animal.

Ding!

When the elevator happily proclaims its arrival to my floor, I push through neatly pressed suits and stagger out just as the doors shut smoothly and silently behind me. Ah, home. Home is white walls, the snick snick of pens racing away, and everything in its place. As I walk to my desk, Buddy swivels about on his chair, his too-bright face lit up like he’s been waiting for me. Buddy, the cowlick. Buddy, the stupid little wrinkle in the sleeve of your shirt that you can never manage to iron away.

“Hey! Dream about any butterflies?” he winks.

“I didn’t dream about anything.” I pick up a pile of papers and smack them on the desk to straighten them out, their soft slide on the glossy desktop making a reassuring sound as they fall into place like the adult version of a jigsaw puzzle.

“How do you know you’re not dreaming right now?” Buddy replies, all twinkling eyes and stupid dimples.

“If I were dreaming, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t dream about you,” I retort. “Where’s my buxom blonde? My sequins and streamers and singing?”

“Your imagination has withered away,” Buddy says seriously, spinning his pen in his fingers. The red ballpoint twirls around and around until it becomes a blur. “I’m the best you can think of.” The pen keeps on twirling, a mesmerizing flash of color in the soothing black-and-white of the office space. Twirl twirl twirltwirltwirl.

I tear my eyes away and return to my work, the little black words splayed on the page like butterflies pinned to a board.

The alarm blares. Fry the egg, toast the toast. Outside, a leaf flutters to the ground, twirls around and around and around like Buddy’s pen from yesterday. Was it really only yesterday? Syrupy golden light filters through the curtains, and even the clouds look like they’re made of gold. The cool air tickles the inside of my nose and I close the window. I sit in the car in traffic, listen to the aggressive honking of the cars. Don’t they realize there are only two lanes and we’re all going in the same direction? No amount of angry noise is going to change a damn thing. Idiots. I stand in the elevator to the office, shoulders pulled up to my ears. The air still slithers, curling around my ear lobe and down the back of my shirt like droplets of oily rain. Walk down the long, gray carpet. Gray because colours are unproductive, because monochrome is sleek, streamlined, enhances productivity by 23%. Buddy and his whirling dervish of a pen. It almost leaves red trails in the air, like brake lights from a car trying to stop. “Ah, listen to that sweet sound!”

I almost ask what he’s talking about, but no, the soft, soothing hum of office machines thrums about the room. I can hear it in me, making guitar strings out of my bones. The sound is continuous and steady, a soft hmmmmm that melts into the background; my metronome. “What do you think? Will your life be measured by the sound of photocopiers and rolling chairs?”

“Would that be so bad?” I sit in my chair, tap the papers against the desk to straighten them out.

“I don’t know, little caterpillar.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re right.” Buddy nods slowly, solemnly. His hair has lost its lustre, but his voice has retained that faux-wise quality that it always has. His brain is where witticisms go to die. “You’re more like a cocoon. I can hear you cracking.”

Alarm. Toast. White flakes like shredded paper fall outside the window, but I still see the spinning red of Buddy’s pen, leaving bloody fingerprints whenever I close my eyes. For once, getting through traffic is easy, and I’m distracted by the cheery red and green lights everywhere. The elevator is empty, warm. I let go of a breath I didn’t know I was holding, lean against the railing and listen to that weird hissing of the air. The carpet on the way to my desk is grey, but the walls are so white, almost reflective under the fluorescent lighting. Buddy sits in my chair in front of my desk, twirling about, legs swinging like a little kid.

“Hey.”

“Where is everyone? And why are you in my desk?” I ask, looking about. I almost expect the lights to flicker, something to prove we’ve been transported to the set of a bad horror flick, but they continue buzzing softly. Somewhere, the printers are still humming. The sound is soothing, the auditory equivalent of a kind hand on your fevered forehead.

“It’s just me and you, buddy.” He smiles mischievously.

“You’re Buddy. Why is it empty?”

“All the drones have left the hive. The queen is dead.” He twirls his red pen.

“I thought we were butterflies,” I answer, walking to the huge window. The city is whiter, but it would look the same if it weren’t for all the bright lights. Cars rushing along, little ant-people going about their little ant-lives. Even from way up here, I can see their perfectly pressed suits, can catch a glimpse of their matching ties/tie-pins/pocket handkerchiefs. “This feels like a dream. Where is everyone?”

“You know how it is in a dream- years can pass in the click of a ballpoint pen.” Buddy clicks the red pen rapidly. Clickclickclickclickclick.

“So just wake me up already,” I snap irritably. “I have things to do.” I pick up my own pen, lying still on my desk, and run my thumb over its smooth casing. It feels solid in my hand and surprisingly heavy. Buddy plucks it from me, rolls it over his soft, moisturized palm. He begins it to twirl it as well, so that there are twin whirls of color. I blink rapidly and step back.

“Stop it.” Buddy grins, tosses his red pen on the ground and continues twirling mine. With a sudden, jerking motion, he snaps it.

“What the fuck Buddy!” I snatch the shattered remains of my pen, letting the blue ink run into the twin lifelines of my palms. “How am I supposed to do any work now?”

“I thought it might wake you up.” He shrugs, a loose, casual movement, and adjusts his navy-blue tie. He takes in my frown and sighs, a disappointed schoolteacher of a sigh, before throwing his arm over my shoulders and pulling me towards the window. My nose presses against the window until the icy glass seems to disappear. All I can see for miles is the steely-grey sky, the rapid motions of people below me. 

“Look, relax,” Buddy says gently. “Are you the man or the butterfly?”