"What's this?" Alison asked, looking inside the adaptor box. "This is not an adaptor."
"Oh yeah," Sam said. "It's some random thing someone found in the gender-neutrals. It looks like some kind of remote, though I've never seen one like this before. I didn't know what to do with it, so I threw it in there."
"What do you mean you didn't know what to do with it?" Alison said. "Couldn't you throw it in the lost and found?"
"We don't have a lost and found anymore," Sam said.
"We don't have a lost and found anymore?" Carl exclaimed. "Since when?"
"I don't know," Sam said, looking annoyed. "Since a month or so ago?"
Alison picked up the remote. "So if you didn't think this was valuable, it would have ended up in the trash?"
"No! I would have given it to the cleaning staff to take care of," Sam said. "I think they hand it over to building management. They have a lost and found somewhere."
Carl was eyeing the remote in Alison's hand. It looked familiar. "I think that's a remote for a vibrator!"
Alison dropped the remote back into the box.
Sam looked up from his monitor. "It's a what?"
"A remote for a vibrator," Carl said. "Like when you're doing couple's play and stuff."
He could feel himself turning red, and he could see that Alison was turning red, too.
"That isn't a thing," Sam said.
"No, no, it's a thing," Carl said.
Alison giggled.
"Let me see that," Sam said, taking the box from Carl.
He looked inside the box and then back up at Carl. He looked shocked. "How does that even work?"
"Well, you have a part that, um, inserts into the other person," Carl said. "Or yourself." Alison made a strangled laughing sound. "And then you, um, control it on the other person. Or yourself. Depending on what you're doing. With this remote."
Alison was having a hard time keeping it together.
"It frees up your hands," Carl said, watching Alison in amusement. "And other body parts." Now he was having trouble keeping a straight face. "To do other things." He strained his face, trying to keep himself from laughing. "To yourself or other people."
Alison burst out laughing, and so did Carl. They hung on to the cube wall. Alison was beat red, and Carl knew he was, too.
"Fuck," Sam whispered. "What the hell is going on in the gender-neutrals?"
YOU ARE READING
Missing Things
General FictionIt's Missing Things, the story of Carl, a tech worker making his way through a post-pandemic office. It's a story about loss and nostalgia. It's about never being able to go back to a time you can still remember. It's about lost connections. But it'...
