Zoom

Some days it feels like I live on another planet. After five years of working from home, the need to escape the cramped corner of my tiny bedroom is palpable. Before it doubled as an office space, my overpriced matchbox wasn’t big enough to swing a cat. Then I adopted two cats—Gin and Tonic—and the matchbox turned into a litter box. The cats glare at me when they hear they’ll have to fend for themselves today while I'm at the office.

Two shuttle buses pass before the streetcar arrives. The incessant short-turns and crew change-overs were things I used to resent, but this morning nostalgia overwhelms me as I wait for the streetcar. Badmouthing public transit makes me a true metrosexual. 

As my right foot steps onto the street, a grey shadow darts past me. It is an odd shape, with a humpback and it moves too fast to be on foot. When I snap back into the present, my head turns in its direction—it was a man in a grey suit, with a backpack, riding a scooter. 

The streetcar operator honks their horn. A profanity slips out of my mouth, much louder than expected, before I step inside and tap my transit card. A beep confirms I paid my fare, and I look around for a seat. Two empty seats face a bearded man wrapped in a ragged blanket, but the smell of urine sends me hunting for alternative seating.

It feels like walking into a morgue when I arrive at the office at 8:47. The office is in the loft of an old building. Everyone always thought it was haunted, and if I had a Ouija board today, it would spell out H-E-L-P.

Familiar sights greet me when I turn on the lights: the old desk chairs with decades of other employees’ flatulence baked into them; the dumpster-sized printer that never worked when it was needed; the coffee maker that missed its calling as a sludge truck; whiteboards with half-wiped plans that were never executed.

The expectation of seeing some familiar faces leads only to disappointment—not even the building managers are around! It’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I tried to convince some colleagues to come in so we could have lunch together, but they had all moved away to the suburbs over the last couple of years; one of them even moved all the way to Singapore. There is not a single other heartbeat in the building. In fact, the only signs of life are the plants.

I join my Zoom call early and wait for everyone else. Some people accepted the invitation, some declined, and some never responded. Joanne joins at 9:31 and immediately sends me a message saying she is having internet issues. Others trickle in over the next five minutes, all off-camera and on mute. Nothing but initials and blank tiles stare back at me.

When it’s time to share my screen and walk everyone through our project plan, my laptop screen flashes green. I always expect the unexpected on video calls, but it's still frustrating. My eyes blink at the screen, waiting for it to remedy itself. It doesn’t. Then, the sound becomes garbled. Nobody else was speaking, so the muddled sounds must be coming from somewhere else.

The overhead lights flicker. A low humming sound fills my ears. The sound isn’t coming from any discernible direction.

The call reconnects—perfect video, no garbling.

“Paul, you froze on us for a minute there!” the product manager says, but I’m too distracted to care.

“Sorry, I’m in the office today. Someone forgot to pay the internet bill,” I retort. Some attendees laugh, or I imagine they do behind those muted mics.

I ask some questions. Nobody answers. I call for updates. Nobody has them. Everyone is simply bored with my presentation. As I babble into the void, I yearn for the days of visiting my colleagues’ desks and hearing about the mundane events of their everyday lives. We end the call fifteen minutes early.

After lunch, my boss, Nick, asks me to join another call for a quick update. Earphones find their way back into my ears. The call rings out for a while before Nick picks up.

“Hey Paul. New background?” he says enthusiastically.

“I'm in the office,” I say despondently.

“Oh, I almost forgot what it looked like. Why are you there?”

“Harry was supposed to join but bailed on me at the last minute.”

“Bummer! Anyway, I just spoke with Nina; she is very pleased with the launch. The phrase she used was ‘out of this world!’”

Earlier in the week, we concluded a project for one of our biggest clients: we built a system using AI that could handle insurance claim submissions, generate invoices, and manage patient billing cycles. Suddenly, a strange memory of my mother negotiating with a travel agent fills my head, long before flight comparison websites put them out of work. “Well, I'm glad to hear Nina is pleased. What will happen to the back-office team?”

Nick considers this. “They'll repurpose some into different roles, but not everyone will make the cut. Anyway, excellent work, Paul.”

When the call disconnects, I turn off my monitor, and turn my head away from my reflection on the black screen. If I continue to excel at work, what positions will humans hold in the coming years? Maybe by then space travel will be available, and we can commute to another planet and destroy that instead.

*****

Once home, a brown package looms on the doorstep. A faint smile breaks out on my face, possibly for the first time today. Packages arrive so quickly these days, as if by rocket ship. My middle-aged elation erupts at the sight of a six-pack of new yellow sponges.

Once I'm comfortably burrowed in sweatpants on the couch, with Tonic curled up beside me and Gin glaring at me from atop the cat tree, the newest season of American Horror Story starts.

I say, “Hey Google, add mouthwash to the shopping list.” There is a pause, and then I hear, “We’re not alone.” Even when the white flashing box on my windowsill malfunctions, it’s still more talkative than my colleagues.

Ten minutes later, a bright light catches me off guard. I almost dismiss it as a camera flash or lightning, but it lingers, as if my condo has become the centre of a stage show and I’m the leading man.

Intrigue pulls me over to the window, and the light disappears. In the sky above, I see what looks like a ripple or a tremor, and wonder if my eyes are playing tricks on me. There's no way a flying saucer just hovered above my condo! If aliens were planning to abduct someone in the area, they could find someone more interesting.

I remember to feed the cats and then return to the couch, regretting ever getting up from my comfy perch. I continue to swipe left and right on the newest dating app. Allan. 34. Video games. Building hard drives. Sober. My eyes roll back in my head as if I need an exorcist. With great restraint, I resist the urge to snap my phone in two, and instead let it charge on the side table.

A loud buzzing sound starts outside. Something like high-pitched radio frequencies or whistles that only a dog’s ears might detect. Whatever it is, I want it to stop. My sweating palms cover my ears.

Gin and Tonic scamper into my bedroom—surely they're brainstorming ideas on how we can put an end to this cacophonous whistling.

In the kitchen, sparks suddenly fly from the socket behind the air fryer. The digital clock melts into green pixels before disappearing completely. The bulb in the lamp clicks, and the light goes out. 

The living room plunges into darkness.

Panic sets in. The only light source comes from my phone, but the bars show no service, and it has stopped charging even with the cable still plugged in. Darkness seeps in through the window too. There's no glow from the streetlights or neighbours or passing cars—even the stars in the sky seem to have gone missing.

A power outage! It's just a power outage!

My fingers feel their way around the room to make it back to the window. Nothing. Do I have a lighter or matches to light the candles?

Then a pulsing sound comes from outside the window. The rhythm picks up, and it sounds more like a hiss, then closer to a beep. A very loud beep. Finally, as if reaching the chorus of some horrendous electronic song, it turns to a deep humming, descending upon the condo. My imagination cannot fathom what it might be.

A bright white light comes back with full force. Violently bright. My arm springs to my eyes to block out what feels like the sun beating down on me. Whatever is in the sky is neither sun nor moon, but just as round—like a ring of a thousand small, flashing lights. The humming noise turns into wailing, and my body staggers backwards and falls onto the floor with a thud. Any minute now, the cats will rush to my aid.

The panes of glass in the window fall out. They smash on the pavement below. Someone will notice. They’ll send help.

The wailing intensifies. My fingers tremble, then my legs. My back arches upwards and forwards, as if something is pulling me towards the window. Edging closer and closer, I worry about plummeting onto the pavement. My body loses all control. The compulsion is too strong. My heels lose gravity. There’s nothing I can do to stop it!

Before my mind processes what is happening, my body levitates. The destination seems to be the three-storey drop from my living room. My eyeballs seem to be the only parts of my body I can move, but they are as powerless as my incapacitated arms and legs. My chance to grasp the window frame for support passes. I'm pulled into the night air, floating above sharp railing edges and concrete slabs beneath me.

As I ascend slowly into the sky, I peer into the apartments of my neighbours. All I can make out through one window is the bright glow of a phone on someone’s chest. What's so fascinating on their screen? A movie, perhaps? If only they could see the real action outside their building. 

Am I just the guinea pig in this horrific experiment? Patient zero. Will my neighbours be next? They don’t even know I have two cats. Who will feed them if I don’t make it home?

The invisible force lifts me higher into the air, into the blinding lights, the flashing void.

*****

When I wake up, my body feels stiff. I'm lying on a steel operating table. Someone must have found my body splattered on the pavement and rushed me to the hospital. Every bone in my body must be shattered.

My eyes take some time to adjust to the brightness of this sterile room. Doctors mumble nearby. I can't make head nor tail of their conversation, but it feels reminiscent of the garbled sounds coming from my laptop earlier that day. Their lab coats are long and grey and form-fitting. They approach me, a group of three. The table feels colder.

Their stethoscope looks sharp. My heart pounds as they listen closely and mutter to each other. It sounds like humming with inflections.

I scream when they drill. Deeper and deeper they go. After a while, my body feels numb. 

*****

Some time later—maybe hours, maybe days, there are no clocks here—I get up and try to walk. My feet feel unused, as if I’m walking for the first time. I wobble, but one thin grey doctor supports me. My feet take as many steps as they can before exhaustion sets in.

At a round bench of stainless steel, there are four plates laid out, and one doctor is serving a stew or a soup. It's grey and lumpy. We sit down for dinner. First, we hold hands, forming a loop of arms around the table. I must be drowsy because it feels like they only have two fingers on each hand, but each finger is long and fat. One of them says something that sounds like a prayer. I forget to use my napkin, but the doctor on my right places it on my lap. I say, “Thanks.”

I’m excited to try a spoonful of soup. It tastes like oatmeal, but smells fishy. The grey doctors are all so amazed by my appetite. I'm halfway through my bowl, and they still haven't taken a sip or a slurp themselves; they're just watching me. That guilty feeling takes over—they really didn’t have to go to all this effort.

After dinner, they make noises and vibrate, like agitated grey squirrels. Now I'm the one staring, and I can't help but laugh. The smallest of the three is quite the storyteller.

When it's time for bed, they tuck me in. They sit around me just in case I wake up and need something. 

If Gin and Tonic were here I’d tell them, “We’re not alone.”