Duality;Solaris Vol. 1

Chapter 6-2: Bloodlines

The door, barely cracked open, was like any other on the floor. Nothing special, nothing fancy or done up about it— just a normal, inconspicuous door that came with the floor space itself. Yet, this door—and, ultimately, the room—stood out in one way above all others. From the arrangement of the cubicles to how all the other rooms were lined up, all things correlated into a singular point. It all pinpointed back to the boss's office being the front-and-center of the entire operation. Anything, and everything, that were to come through his door would first be witnessed by everyone on this floor. Everyone would know something was up. There were no escapes from this. And, so, as John stood at the boss's door, all free eyes were staring daggers at his back as they await the next tasks for their idle hands.

    Out with a sigh and in with a more appropriate attitude, John enters and closes the door fully behind himself. There, sat at his strangely meager chair, is the boss focused deep into the gratuitous paperwork humbling his ornate desk. The flipping of papers long drained the precious hues of life from the busy man, yet the well-fed husk riffles on through the chatter of John's moves. His steps sliding tacitly towards the guest seats in the room's center. Each sliding movement passing through the laurels adorning the guy's well-furnished office: collections of decorative memories spewed about, golden records painting his faux wooden walls, through the tawny carpeting comforting every fresh sole, to the comfy, velvet red guest chairs that sat at the precipice of such an expensive-looking desk. One couldn't dream of a larger contrast between the two faces of this modestly-sized room. Yet, there sat the boss, aching in his crummy, meager stack chair.

"So, you wanted to see me?" The words hesitant to even reverberate within his throat, much less out into the open, gaudy air. Standing straight up on his heels of his soles, John might've sound disrespectfully nonchalant, yet his his demeanor is saying anything but. Nevertheless, it's enough to pull the boss's eyes up from his sea of inked paperwork.

"Oh! Hello! I hope you weren't waiting too long for me", the boss's brimming expression shined with his jolly smile, "You know how I can be. So much paperwork, so little time."

    Typically, this would be one to throw off your average worker—much less a newbie—but this jolly expression did nothing to change John's apprehension. "Mr. Bordeaux, 'Sir', I heard that you wanted to see me."

    A mark of confusion colors the boss's face. "Did I?"

"Well, that's what Ms. Washington said, at least." The confusion functioning both ways for the two men. John's words agreeing with the Mr. Bordeaux's meant one thing.

"Oh! Ms. Washington! Yes", an eureka moment bursts through the boss's already bright demeanor, "If it was her, then that must mean that it's Friday. If it's Friday, it must mean you're late again. My, I should really thank her for such diligence here soon."

    A wave of vexation brushes through John. It was a first. There's being ratted out, but then there is ratting yourself out— especially by accident. The trickery must have Ms. Washington in giggles at her pearly desk. The thoughts of surprise and vexation consuming John's mind as some bubble up to the surface and past his professional, anxious demeanor.

"Now. Now. You cannot take it out on her. She was just doing her job as she is expected to." The calm quelling before the storm of those groan-inducing words soon to come. A sway of a hand, the boss's bald head changed from fair coddling to legitimate worry as his attention realigned back to John himself.

    His eyes taken away from his daily fountains of paperwork for, what must have been, the first time in several hours. The clasping of hands—as quiet as they were, in reality—were deafening. Elbows of the boss, Mr. Bordeaux, planted firmly on the cushions of paperwork underneath; his chin resting upon his clamped hands, Mr. Bordeaux leans forward to match the seriousness that his worry carries. Clearing his throat, "'The one who sits on top is the face of those that make up the body below them.' It is our duty as managers and department heads to become the shining examples of the model employee to inspire those that work under us to do the same."

    Those words began to spew out of Mr. Bordeaux's baritone voice-box. As if it's a speech he had practiced many times before, his eyes closed and the pronunciation of the words pitched to perfection. Still, John's attention didn't stray away from him. Matter of fact, he's taken off-guard by this. Not because of those words he has been hearing for a handful of months already. No, it's because Mr. Bordeaux never began his 'public face' speech with his own quote. Nor did he start at what typically would be the end of it either. Something has changed.

"Wha—"

    Before John could cut in about this, Mr. Bordeaux simply raises his hand in soft protest and opens his eyes. Staring into John's twitching irises, "The incremental tardiness with every coming Friday, the easily fixable mistakes on your reports that were never there before, spacing out during some of Mr. Fujiwara's special training seminars for you, your lack of communication with me since they started. The fact we haven't spent a single minute—outside of work—together in these passing months, or how pale your face has gotten." An exhale with the density of a kiloton bomb blows from between Mr. Bordeaux's pained teeth. The stress starting to get through his role-model demeanor to affect even him. "You're my nephew. I worry about you."

    A facade of John's falls. This isn't the time to hold up his taught principles of professionalism—regardless of how flimsy they have gotten. If Mr. Bordeaux—his boss, the pinnacle of such formalities—wasn't going to keep face, nor would he. This is something a bit more serious to them than some job, something that only starkly few left in this world could still say. "Thanks, uncle", John warmly mumbles, "Your concern always tends to bring me back to my senses— somewhat. I do have something to confess to you."

    "Hmm. Confess?" The word raises an eyebrow from Mr. Bordeaux. "Never heard you use a wo— Never-mind, what's on your mind?" While all of it has become sincere, suspicious little of substance had actually been said by John. More strange is the preamble to him saying anything of potential substance. Was this the work of Mr. Fujiwara's presence over the years— the decade or so?

    Carefully, John takes the crumbling Walkman from out of his back-pocket and sets it on top of his uncle's pristine, mahogany desk. "Remember the Walkman you got me when I was a kid?" He presents as to ease into what would appear to anyone else like an excuse, "Something crazy weird happened yesterday, and it broke. Like, really broke. I'm lost as to where to get it fixed, if it can even be fixed at this point. I just wanted to say that I feel bad about destroying your Walkman."

    "Huh..." Mr. Bordeaux was lost in a myriad of his own questions by this point. "Look, nephew, I'm not sure where to begin myself." He, unclasping his hands, points to the devastated device in front of him as if he is poking an unmoving animal in the wild— unsure if it is still alive or dead. "It's ok, I'm not mad. I don't know why I would be. It's a gift from your dad anyway. But, jeez! Did a bulldozer run over this thing?"

    "What, no. Some teenage punk bumped into me, and then some amazonian appeared out of nowhere." The agitation of the whole thing beginning to bubble up in his blood as the series of this events stream through his mind.

    One word, again, popped out as immediately strange. "Uh. Hm.", Mr. Bordeaux paused, "An Amazonian?" The two shared a look. The look was equal amounts of absurdity and disbelief. Yet, a rift had opened up. A type of rift that only family could ever truly open. "Ok, you've got to be pulling me leg now. That hogwash couldn't even convince a lobotomized child, much less I. C'mon, seriously, what happened to it?"

    The two bicker back and forth as time trickles away to the closed off onlookers from outside that office door. Sweat and uncertainty twitches at those in the cubicles furthest away at the uproar. Worry seeps into the common worker at the howls heard from a boss that has never hit a decimal louder than a teaspoon's tap onto porcelain to any of them before. Thoughts aplenty spewing between those that gossip without nary of concern about either a boss's shielded display of nepotism or the many of other familial culprits behind the praters of bored livelihoods theorizing on other's taken actions. Thus, office life continues on without a beat missed nor deviation in sight. Nevertheless, the ones closest to the office room are in fits of giggles. For the few words that could escape such an elaborately decorated room were that of aggressive contemplations about one thing: what the hell is an Amazonian, realistically?