The Story of Silence (Book 3)

Chapter 7

Wednesday, March 8th, 2006, the same place as before. Silence never left. Blah:

Silence sat at his desk in his office at Inks and Paper Incorporated, his uncle's business. He had been working there for almost seven years now, ever since his uncle had asked him if he would like a job during his last year of school. Silence had said yes, because a job was a job, and had been there every day since. Well not quite every day since, but you know what that means. The work wasn't always interesting, in fact it was rarely interesting, but there was nothing really wrong with it either and there was nothing that Silence could think of that he wanted to do instead.

His office was the same size as everybody else's. He had a desk next to the window, and he sat so that he faced the door. The room was not large, but large enough to have two people sitting on the other side of his desk from him. It had a couple of filling cabinets; they were always important and useful, and the walls were dark cream with a brown carpet on the floor. Silence liked his office. It was his, and that was reason enough to not like it, but he did. He did not look at other people's offices and wish that theirs was his, no; he sat in his and was thankful that all the other employees did not have his. It wouldn't have made much difference though, if they had his and he had theirs, well, the office he would be in would be his. This meant that they would never have his, and he could never have theirs.

Shuffling aside some paperwork, he concentrated on the sums standing in a row in front of him. Silence did a bit of everything, it was his job. He collected the mail, did the book keeping, mailed orders for his uncle, and helped customers whenever he could. Helping the customers who came in asking for certain stationery items was not his favourite job. Sometimes it called for someone who could speak though, as some customers didn't always have the patience to wait for him to write out a reply and hand it to them to read. They wanted someone who could say things and say them fast so that they could get their stuff and leave as soon as possible. That had been a problem for a long time now. Not everyone had the patience to wait. It was so much faster to just say things, to hear someone say something. Even though he could write at the same speed as someone could speak, that person still had to read what he wrote, and not everyone could read fast.

He was alerted to the fact that someone had sent him a message by a bell ringing on his desk. In all the other offices the employees had telephones to contact each other, but in his he had a sort of recording computer. Someone would say what they wanted to say into their phone, and then it would go along the line to his computer and let him hear what was said. He could then reply by typing a message using the computer and send it to whoever had sent the first message; they would then receive his reply on their computer screen.  Or, if they had it on a certain setting, their computer would speak his reply. It was quite simple.

He reached over and pressed play on the message and turned back to reading the sums. It was from his friend Brian on the first floor, Customer Services; he was telling him that there was a lady downstairs who wanted to see him.

A lady, thought Silence in annoyance. Well, he got quite a few ladies asking for him, that was nothing new, but still, they always wanted to see him. The men that came didn't seem to like speaking to him because he could never speak back, but the women? They, they liked talking to him. He was not quite sure why, maybe because he couldn't speak back to them.

His colleagues at work always joked about how many women wanted to speak to him instead of the others. They would say: 'Finally they have found a guy that won't talk back! Pity there aren't any girls with your condition, ay, Silence?!' And then they would laugh. Silence would smile politely and then go back to work.

Turning aside from his sums he typed a reply back asking if she would see someone else. There were times when he got tired of the joking. He sent the message off and a moment later a reply came telling him that Brian would check.