8/31/10

Answering a Classified


Marshall Dunwitty sat in his suit & tie in the stale, pale HR office of a Science Research Institute. Aside from the poster of the cat with the caption "Hang in There", the walls were barren.

Dunwitty was nervous. He'd seen the job listing in the classifieds for an Auditor and while he'd never worked in the Science field before, he'd jumped at the opportunity.

Now, two days later, he wasn't so sure. Everyone he'd met so far was so stern, simple, depressed. Dunwitty didn't like any of those personal attributes, because he himself had all of those attributes. He'd hoped for bright, happy co-workers that he could despise behind their backs. It made the days go by quicker.

When it came to people skills Dunwitty had few, which made him a great Auditor, not a great communicator. Auditors had to be good at checking things, counting things, cataloging things; not being chatty around the water cooler.

The door to the HR Office opened, revealing a balding pudgy man in thick square glasses. He shuffled around Dunwitty and sat down, causing his chair to expel a tremendous amount of trapped air. The HR man didn't seem to care, as he picked up the paperwork on his desk. He surveyed the forms.

"May I be frank," he asked Dunwitty.





Dunwitty glanced at the HR man's nameplate. It read Ted Markum. Confused, Dunwitty repositioned in his seat.

"Is that a trick question?"

"No," Markum said, not looking up from his papers. "Why would it be?"

"Nevermind," Dunwitty said, regretting even going to the interview.

"Good," Markum said.

Markum set down his papers and looked at Dunwitty for the first time.

"I'm going to go ahead and be frank."

"Ok."

"We've torn a sizable hole in the space time continuum," Markum said. "And now there are creatures from another dimension literally spilling out all over the place. There are small ones, big ones, nice ones, nasty ones. Ones who speak English. Ones who don't. It's like a zoo around here, Dunwitty. While we figure out a way to sew up the hole, we need someone who can catalog all of these creatures. Wrangle them if you need to. Name them. Tame them. Blame them, we don't care. We just need someone who can audit the heck out these things. We're in quite the pickle, Dunwitty. What do you say?"

Dunwitty considered the offer.

"Would I have to talk to anyone?" He asked.

"People?"

"Yes," Dunwitty said.

"No, I suppose not."

"When do I start?"

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This little idea sparked while at work. I wrote down a few ideas on post it notes and then finished it up over my lunch break. The old way I would deal with an idea is bounce it around in my head until it deflated. One of the main reason for this blog is to stop doing that. Now I know some ideas need massaging and are for a bigger purpose like say a novella or a screenplay. Dunwitty's interview was not one of those ideas. I didn't want to massage this one... I just wanted to put it down on paper and get it out. I think I'm going to like this blog.

2 comments:

  1. Cool man, I like this. It's kind of a little Twilight Zoney, but it's comedic as well. Keep with this.

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  2. I really like the idea of a story that approaches sci-fi as something commonplace. The absurdist humor of accepting, well...the absurd and mixing it with every day life is always funny to me. Versus something like Men In Black that tries to give an explanation to things. Does that make sense? haha! Either way, I liked it.

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