Hippopede

Director's Office, Extension 4749.3596.7755, The Factory. 12/18/95 AUC.

            There are many rooms in the Factory. In fact, one could say, and one might even be agreed with, that the entirety of the Factory is made up of rooms. Rooms, hallways, that lead to other rooms. Rooms inside of rooms. Rooms next to rooms. Rooms above, and below, other rooms.

            There are red rooms. Blue rooms. Rooms for sitting. Rooms for drawing. Rooms for thinking. Rooms that make things. Rooms that unmake things. Rooms that unmake things other rooms made. Rooms for sleeping. Rooms for gardening. Rooms for visiting. Rooms that write letters. Rooms for waiting. Rooms containing ceramic elephants. Rooms with no easily discernible walls. Rooms with no lights. Rooms with no suns. Rooms that contain highly advanced, delicate,  and lucrative equipment. Rooms containing books. Rooms that contain nothing. Rooms that are chocolate flavored. Rooms that contain four generations of the properly disposed hair and fingernail clippings of Wanamingo, Minnesota. Rooms that are magic. Rooms that are dreams. Rooms that are not.

            There are large rooms. Small rooms. Smaller rooms. Rooms that sit on the tips of pins. Rooms inside buildings. Rooms containing buildings. Rooms of variable size. Rooms that aren’t where they are supposed to be. Rooms hung in the firmament. Rooms behind eyes. Rooms inside undiscovered insects inside amber. Rooms built on supposedly cursed Indian burial grounds.  Rooms containing minds. Rooms that are under water. Rooms that are under couch cushions. Rooms in cardinal directions. Rooms inside cardinals. Rooms inside books. Rooms inside lungs. Rooms at the bottom of shot glasses. Rooms that are not in Hell. Rooms in the shadow cast inside the gap between your bookcase and the wall. Rooms that contain galaxies.

            There are rooms.

            And inside one such room was Mr. Darkly. He was in a room designed for only the use of one person in the entire multi-verse, the director and co-owner of The Factory, and that was he.

            For a room with such a lofty title, it wasn’t much to look at. It was perfectly square, slate grey, and utterly unapologetic in its Spartan utility. The only other things in the space were the three concessions he had made in the contents of his office. Two were concessions made for others, but one had been made for himself, and in front of that particular indulgence was where he stood.

            It was easily the most eye-catching thing in the room. It was also the largest thing in the room, taking up three-fourths of the wall opposite the entrance to the right of his desk, and casting the whole room in red-black light. Mr. Darkly stood before it, hands clasped behind his back, as he watched a herd of titanic, long insects on longer legs-like a forest that had reared their slumbering heads from the ground and walked away on the their thousand branching legs-migrate across a red-black world of smoke and color with no discernible sky or ground. Mr. Darkly continued watching as one of the enormous tree-bugs fell, legs buckling under their own weight, as well as the weight of an entire flock of birds with no heads and three wings covered in eyes. They had set upon the thing a good twenty minutes earlier, utterly covering every inch of the body like a shroud of a promised death, no matter if it would be by inches. Mr. Darkly imagined what kind of death knells such a creature might produce, as the two dimensional portal into the Bleed did not transmit sound.

            Mr Darkly turned on his heels and walked over to his desk, his heels clacking against the grey tile only because he found the rhythmic sound soothing. The antique leather chair distinctly did not creak as he lowered himself on to it. He was not tense. He was, also, certainly not at all impatient. To Mr. Darkly, worry was something that happened to other people. Indeed, there were even people on The Factory’s payroll whose sole jobs were to worry. So, it was without any sort of growing frustration, at all, that having exhausted the mind occupying capabilities of the window that was not a window, the director turned his gaze to the three clocks high on the wall opposite his desk.

            Each clock displayed a different time, because, in Mr. Darkly’s opinion, it wasn’t terribly useful to have three clocks that kept the same time. They held time for The Hub, whatever time system it had been decided upon for the lifeless planet the director’s office occupied, and New York, respectively; but it was the time in The Hub that held his interest.

            Which was now 2:40 pm.

            Mr. Darkly’s outline grouted and spluttered across the air in oily streaks that were certainly not angry. Collecting himself, physically as well as mentally, the director ran his hand over the glass top of his desk. He had originally allowed the desk and the accompanying chair only because it was expected. Well, that and most sapient species seemed to become very distressed when in the presence of someone who didn’t quiver all over constantly, and being a in a sitting position behind a suitable desk seemed to help with that. The desk had grown on him though. 
           
          Figuratively speaking, anyway. As far as he was aware, this was not one of their growing desks from the agricultural branch. 
         
         This was not one of those mere, flimsy moderns desks, oh no, this desk was built like a house with the disposition of a tank. The kind of desk one could wrap a car around and that seemed to call out to unprotected shins. It was a wooden brick framed with drawers running around the edge that turned vying for leg room an application of advanced yoga technique, and would reward any sudden movement with a smart rap on the tops of the thighs. In a word, it was-

            Mr. Darkly quickly collected himself as someone burst through the door in a flurry of activity.

            “Director?”

            “Hm? Yes?” Mr. Darkly brushed a non-existent speck from his suit, it was as devoid of detritus as the room always was, but did not look up. He did not actually have to turn his face towards Steven to see him with perfect clarity, down to the individual outlines of the cells of his skin.

            But that was fine, because Steven’s gaze had already been firmly transferred back to his seemingly ever-present PDA. He brought down the strangely inkless pen-which Mr Darkly had been informed was the whole point, and it was called a stylus, and would he please kindly stop trying to fill it with ink-down onto the touchscreen with a suitably annoying click.

            “Riiight. We just got the paperwork back from the Saint Guillaume branch. I’ve already sent everything where it needs to go, but I’ve emailed you a copy of the files. I don’t think we’re going to be able to get the property around there that we were looking at, at least not while we’re playing soft-“

            “The photos?”

            “Yeaaaaah. They’re right here, in triplicate, along with all the other physical copies of the files that need your approval.”

            There was a sound like a stack of steaks the size and temperament of a two year old child being dropped on to a grocery counter as a small mountain of paperwork blocked out Mr. Darkly’s view of the world.

            “Good.” 
    
              Mr. Darkly waited. Steven still stood in front of the desk. He could tell from all the clicking sounds.

            “I shall inform Mr. Brightly of it right away.”, he added for the man’s benefit, as Mr. Brightly knew everything the director knew. Regardless, the words seemed to have little impact on the man lingering in front of his desk. If anything, the clicking sounds seemed to increase in both intensity and number.

            "Mr. Brightly will be pleased by the amount of time and effort you have put into this project." A phrase of great power, it succeeded in exorcising the texting phantom from his office.

            Appearances taken care of, Mr. Darkly squeezed the paperwork between his thumb and forefinger down into a cube about a centimeter wide. He’d deal with that later. The director moved his fingers imperceptibly and pulled a specific photo from the cube. It showed a restaurant, but he only gave it a cursory glance before flipping it over.

            1:34pm.

            He slipped the photo back into the compressed space of the cube. For the first time, Mr. Darkly opened the top, central drawer of his desk and withdrew the crumbled manila envelope within, undid the brittle string, and withdrew the contents that were not supposed to exist. For the second time, he ran his eyes over it for the first time.

            A yellowed newspaper clipping.

            12/18/95 AUC 1:30 PM - LE CAFÉ ADELAIDE DESTROYED BY BOMB

            “A cycle is broken.” said Mr. Darkly to Mr. Brightly.

            “Broken.” said Him to He.

            “But what now? What do we change? Should we change? Do as always?” They asked Them.

            “Change as always.” said One to The Other.

            “But what if they come?” The Other asked the One.

            “They come.” stated Them to They.

            “…Then we’ll do as we have to.” He said to Him.

            “We have to.” That One said to He.

            “I can’t allow-we-we can’t stop now. We've gone too far to stop-our work-“ Sputtered the Brother to His.

            “We work.” Stated the Twin to His.

            “We work.” said Mr. Darkly to the drab room lit in black-red, rubbing his hand as it roiled. But he was calm. “That’s the way with us. We work and then we die. We’ll just have to make them work harder.” 

---

Notes.

So this is a thing that happened. A thing that verges on being about a desk.

A thing that happened when I'm SUPPOSED to be writing something, anything, about Pozzo, but there you go.

Also, paragraphs of lists of things. People love that, right?

Any and all characters mentioned in here will NOT appear this year...maybe in tiny things but NOTHING MAJOR *shakes fist at future self*

Anyway, actual notes: This is sort of intended, from the title, to the song choice, and even some of the content, to be response to Wulf's post Lemniscate. If you haven't read it, I recommend you do so.

This post was originally going to feature the song choice of Sixteen Tons, but, for some reason, I pegged this as a better match/contrast/something to Wulf's song choice in his post.

Also I have been sitting on that picture since the beginning of me getting into this RP stuff. You have no idea how good I feel to have finally used it.

EDITED