The boxes arrived in the morning post, just as Mary was about to leave for work.
Stacking the beige cardboard parcels one on top of another in the front hallway was satisfying, and also created a sense of anxiety. They'd have to wait for nine whole hours as Mary worked at her day job. The boxes would be at the back of her mind, teasing, calling for her attention even though she'd have to focus on the numbers and invoices that filled her usually bland days at the accounting firm. She signed for the shipment, and, with one last look on her way out the door, tried to put the contents out of her mind.
On the train into the city, all that Mary could think about were those boxes. She wanted so badly to stay home, rip them open, tip the contents onto the dining room table, and start working on her carefully drawn plans. But duty, responsibility, the very life that let her dream and order and purchase them meant she had to keep moving forward, and into the world.
Tugging casually at the hem of her dark wool skirt, Mary stared out the window as the suburbs flew by. This area was a recent development. Blocks and blocks of identical houses, all the same drab colours with the same recently leafless trees standing guard outside. Rows and rows of neutrality and boredom whizzing by at high speed. Dull and repetitive, like everything else seemed these days.
The train slowed down. A woman's voice announced the next station, unintelligible through distortion and the movement of people towards the doors. The houses stopped speeding by, settling slowly into large brown monoliths to the expansion of the city and its people.
The station was built of pale concrete, bland and unobtrusive. It had been hastily constructed on a tight budget, and funding for art was tied up in the perpetual red tape that was municipal politics. Life moved through the building constantly; there was no reason to stay still here. People pushed off the car and into the stairwells. Impatient riders pushed back, filling the train from the doors towards the centre of the car. The only sounds were the staccato click of heels, and the occasional curse as backpacks banged together in the crush.
After several minutes, the surge of people on and off the train ceased. Chimes signalled the closing of the doors, and the train was off again.
Subdivision. Station. Subdivision. Station. There were seven stations on Mary's commute, each moving past the window in a blur of bodies and baggage and trees and soundbreaking walls. She wished she'd brought her notebook, but it had been left on the counter in the confusion around the early delivery. There was nothing to do but count stations and avoid the elbow and hands of the well dressed gentleman in the seat beside her.
The unintelligible voice announced another station, and Mary recognised the number of syllables as being the same as her stop. She stood quickly, grabbed her purse and bag, and stepped around the penetrating gaze of her seatmate. Watching the people around her carefully, she sidestepped easily around the people fighting to get onto the train, and onto the station platform.
It was busy this morning. It took several minutes for Mary to make it to the stairs, and several more to patiently work her way down them. She passed vending machines and newspaper stalls, people watching the televisions advertising local events and the line for the coffee shop in the corner. The station had been built for a kinder, gentler age where a smaller workforce moved with manners and without paper cups full of hot water. These days it was human gridlock, obscuring the exits and blocking any quick movements to escape.
Finally, Mary broke out of the overheated station and into the cool morning air. She took a deep breath to clear the stink of the train out of her lungs, and started walking towards the office building, a brisk 10 minute walk from where she left the station.
The sounds of the city surrounded her. Cars honked as they inched through the streets. Beggars asked for change. The occasional zealot called out asking Mary if she'd found God. She nodded or dodged or ignored as necessary, the routine so regular she barely had to think about what the proper response should be in each situation.
Reaching her destination, Mary, entered the large blue glass box that would be her base of operations until her workday was done. She rode up the floors in a silent elevator, staring steadfastly ahead at the split in the doors. Her mind started shifting into work mode: invoices, ledgers, software, deadlines.
A sharp bing and the doors parted. The receptionist looked up and waved as Mary stepped of the elevator into the overly bright and artificially cheerful waiting area. Mary smiled back, inclining her head slightly in acknowledgement as the woman behind the desk grabbed the phone receiver before it had a chance to ring. Two steps forward, a sharp right turn, and Mary scanned her security pass over the small black box that hung beside the door. There was a solid mechanical click, and a whir as the motor started to swing the glass panels inward.
Mint green cubicles lined the open area here. Dozens and dozens of heads bent low over dozens of keyboards, clacking dozens of words into the ether. There was the odd cough, a few murmurs here and there, but overwhelmingly the world of MacKenzie and Worfield, CPAs, moved to the beat of typing fingers.
The day for Mary was always a whirl of spreadsheets and numbers. Her fingers flew over the keypad as she entered the numbers in, ran a few macros, and spit out charts and reports. Punctuating her tasks with trips for large mugs of hot coffee, the morning moved at its regular steady pace. It was relaxing, almost. Soothing. Numbing. The job wasn't particularly exciting, but it wasn't bad, either. Mary couldn't complain.
At 11:59 she saved her spreadsheet, carefully closing out the windows that she wasn't going to look at over her lunch hour. Her mouse moved across the desk, and the cursor with it, down to the icon for her web browser. Mary left it there, moving quickly into the lunchroom to grab her sandwich out of the refrigerator and refill her coffee mug one last time for the day. She hurried back to her desk, set down the food, and slowly and carefully clicked the left mouse button.
The browser opened, with the last page she'd been to yesterday filling in on the screen. The brightly coloured links stood out against the dreariness of Mary's day. , and She reached over and grabbed her sandwich with one hand, taking a bite mindlessly as she kept her eyes glued to the screen. Moving her mouse a few inches further, she selected a brilliant green rectangle, and clicked again.
This page opened quickly. A white screen first, then dotted grey lines sketched themselves out into a grid pattern. Some of the cells started to fill in with a slightly pixelated effect. Blue then green, yellow then red. A pattern emerged form the chaotic renderings, and Mary took another bite of her lunch as she waited eagerly.
The page finished loading, and soft beep sounded from her headset on the desk. She started moving her mouse around again, hesitantly at first, but then faster as the blocks created a new and larger pattern to the right of what she had finished yesterday. Her coffee cooled in its cup as Mary frantically worked on the design, hoping to finish before the clock on the desktop moved to 1. She hit save, and took a swig of cold coffee just as her boss walked back into his office at 12:59. Smiling, Mary closed the browser, and began to meticulously reopen the programs she would need for this afternoon's deadlines.
The rest of the day passed as uneventfully as the morning had. Mary didn't need to look up to tell when it was approaching 5 o'clock. The rustling of bags and jackets began replacing the clicks and whirs of the day, as her co-workers began to pack their things and think about beating the rush out to the commuter trains that would be leaving shortly.
Mary waited until the office was almost empty. She usually enjoyed the last half hour after everyone was gone. It was quiet, peaceful almost. Having the office to herself seemed like something decadent or imprudent. But today her mind was already back home, in the hall, ripping the tape of the boxes and beginning her evening's work instead.
Five-thirty finally came around, and Mary quickly packed her computer up and ran out the door. The pedestrian traffic was still heavy, and the rush at the station seemed worse than usual. With barely restrained impatience, Mary jostled her way down to the tracks, and wedged herself into a packed car. She stood, bags in one hand, the other holding the safety strap over her head as the train bounced and shook on its way back out of town. Slowly, stop after stop, the train emptied. Mary sat for the last two stops, her mind firmly at home and on her project the entire way.
After the short walk back to her front door, Mary juggled her bags as she dug into coat pockets looking for her keys. Her hand shook as she tried to get the key in the lock once, twice... the bolts clicked reassuringly back, and the front door swung open. The late evening sun flooded into the hallway, and lit the cardboard so it appeared to glow slightly from its place of honour in the corner.
Mary dropped her bags and coat unceremoniously onto the bottom step of the stairway leading up to the second storey. She wouldn't need those for a while yet, and anything not on the ground floor could wait. She grabbed the top box, and walked into the dining room. The box contrasted with the dark mahogany table. Walking around the shelf that separated the kitchen from the dining area, Mary opened the fridge, pulled out a glass container of stew, and stuffed it into the microwave. She hit a couple of buttons on the control panel, and while the leftovers were heating up she pulled open drawers until the found the one with the tools she needed. A pair of scissors, old and worn. A small knife whose blade had been ground down to half its original length. Her notebook, with the Wal-Mart receipt marking the last page she'd worked on last night. A soup spoon was found in another drawer nearby. She took these into the dining room and dropped them next to the box.
The microwave signalled dinner was ready. Mary grabbed her laptop off the counter with one hand, opening the microwave and pulling out the soup with the other. Balancing carefully, she headed back to the table.
She set the soup down at the far end of the table. The laptop was setup in the middle, flipped open and already logged on to the page she needed. Humming tunelessly, mary used the knife to cut open the box. She opened the flaps gingerly, almost reverently.
Inside were a stack of plastic tubs, brightly coloured. Mary lifted one out, and pulled off the lid. She moved towards the laptop, and gently turned it over onto the table top.
Hundreds of bright blue bricks cascaded onto the table, rattling the wood as the fell. Mary picked up two and fitted them together with a solid click. She set them down on the laptop, and smiled.
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