Tack, click. Tack, click. Tack, click.
Tick, tock. Tick , tock. Tick, tock.
The rhythm of the pencil’s tip and ferrule alternating as Rigel tapped each end against the desk mirrored that of the second hand on the clock as he stared at it. Each second stretched out to infinity as the final minutes of the working day passed.
Tack, click. Tack, click. Tack, click.
Tick, tock. Tick , tock. Tick, tock.
To say Rigel was bored would be a mistake of the highest calibre, bored was what he was three years ago when he first realised that his job as an administrative assistant was never going to get interesting. Two years of doing the same things in the same way with no respite and no change in sight had slowly eroded his optimism and his enthusiasm. Man’s reach was exactly the same as his grasp when his life was in stasis. But that was then, and this was now.
To say Rigel felt hopeless would be incorrect too. Hopeless was how he felt two years ago, realising that he had spent years of his life in this job stagnating, stopping while the world passed him by. His friends grew up, paired off and drifted away from him while he was stuck in a groundhog day loop with seemingly no escape. But that was then, and this was now.
To say Rigel felt inspired would be terribly out of date. Inspired was how he had felt a year ago when he first began to formulate a plan to escape from his life and his fate. The rush of striving to a goal had given him energy and enthusiasm he thought had died while he shuffled paper and annotated spreadsheets. But that was then, and this was now.
No, today Rigel felt driven and impatient. Today was the day his scheme began and his dreary, tedious life of shuffling between his flat and his desk while he waited to shuffle off this mortal coil, was over. Today was the last day of his notice, and soon he would be free. This was now, and the quagmire of the past was then.
Of course his bosses had asked why he was leaving, but all he would say was that he had other opportunities he wished to pursue. The air of mystery had given him a certain cachet around the office with his co-workers. The serried ranks of bland, beige people all seemed either intrigued or offended with his desertion and closed mouthness. Oh how they gossiped when they thought he couldn’t hear.
“I heard he’s leaving to join a commune.”
“They say he’s found himself a rich woman to look after him”
“They say he’s found religion, he’s off to a monastery”
Of course none of them were right and they knew it, but the sheer pleasure of the salacious spike through the homogeneity of their working lives was worth the knowingly lying to themselves and each other. For now he was the bright point of their lives, the lodestar by which they would orient the events of their lives and the mirror in which they would see them. He was interesting and exciting and they were not.
No, today was the day that Rigel put into play his plan to take over the world.
Tack, click. Tack, click. Tack, click.
Tick, tock. Tick , tock. Tick, tock.
Five o’clock. He stood up, determination and relief pouring off him like steam from a runner on a winter’s morning.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Each step towards the door echoed in his ears like freedom’s herald, scattering the herd before him as they subconsciously recognised him as their natural predator. A free man in a pen of willing slaves. One of the younger women stepped towards him, a smile on her face which he gladly repaid. It was her! He had watched her furtively for years, noting how she moved so surely and gracefully through the pell mell of mediocrity that was the lifeblood of this company. She had, for her part, spent the last few years studiously ignoring him and his potential advances. Advances which died having never known the light of day, for how could he ever catch such a creature’s eye? But now he was a new man with new purpose and poise. How quickly his status had risen with this move, this correct step in the path of his life. She had ignored his gazes for years, but now she was coming to him , as he felt was right. Her soft lips parted, ready to breathe a word to him, no doubt laden with the admiration that was surely the due of a man with such a bold plan. This moment, here, now. This moment was when the world’s grasp of who they thought Rigel was would be released. This was where the shackles of their lack of expectations would be shattered by the reality of his inner change. His ears strained to hear the words that would undoubtedly change the world.
“Keycard.”
The word, so abruptly flung from those lips, slapped him in the face with the weight of the venom it carried. This was not a woman approaching a potential lover. This was not a woman talking to a man. This was a human talking to a cockroach, a necessary dealing with an offensive creature that must be finished before returning to the warmth of an intelligent clique. The blinkers lifted, he saw the forced nature of the smile and how it pulled at her face like a rictus of agony and revulsion.
“Oh. Uh, Sorry. It’s here somewhere”, he muttered, scrabbling in his pockets for the card he always had slung around his neck on a lanyard with the company logo on. The card that gave his name as Roger Felling, not Rigel Starchild. It was Roger Felling that had worked here for five years, but in his mind it was Rigel Starchild who would one day rule the world. The shattering of his facade of confidence had allowed his blush to escape its confinement in his psyche, spreading the red light of embarrassment and shame across his pasty features, right up to the fringe of his non-descript brown hair.
“It’s here, I’ll just take it.”, his Venus replied, flicking the lanyard and card off his neck without apparently ever doing something so crass as making contact with his shirt. That done she smoothly pocketed the card and string as she turned on her heel, her exquisite heel, to walk off back to the personnel department from whence she came.
Roger sighed and continued his lonely schlep to the exit, passing through the people he had spent most of the last five years among without a farewell or a handshake to mark his passing. As the automatic doors finally deigned to notice him and slide open he heard one of his former colleagues say “Apparently he is joining a monastery after all!”, the illusion of relevance and importance came rushing back and nearly carried him through the door with a majestic tread before the reply “Who would have thought it of Chris?” caught under his foot and made his last action in the office a stumble through the door, scattering his meagre possessions from his cardboard box like an unkempt duke dispensing charity among the serfs.
Sighing he allowed his customary slouch to return and bent over to pick up the largesse of his container before the rush out of the door crushed what little he had brought out of the social and emotional desert that was his career.
When the last precious pen and the block of post-its that he was taking as a leaving present from himself were stowed back in their rickety cardboard prison, he stood up and took a deep breath. Today, Rigel Starchild reminded himself, was the day that he was free. Today he was going to change himself.
Today he was going to change the world. He stepped off into the fine rain with an unfocused gaze and a swagger, or a decent approximation thereof, in his step.
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