Future Challenges of the Lightbulb Industry
“It was just a typo.” Laura lamented to herself. “A simple mistake that anyone could make. That everyone has made at some point.”
Other people from all around the office kept piling into the main conference room wearing anxious expressions in addition to their normal attire. Jane from accounts took a seat with her coloured pens and alphabetised notebook, and next to her sat Jamie, the I.T. support trainee. He fidgeted nervously with a USB flash drive which immediately and deeply irritated Jane to the point of not one but two indignant sighs. Pretty soon they would hit eye-contact and scowl territory. Laura opened her laptop and tried again to edit the daily metrics spreadsheet, slamming the lid shut when, once more, an unyielding dialogue box told her that the file was locked by another user.
“I know how you feel, Laura. This meeting request has everyone worried.” Consoled Harriet, another member of Laura’s team. She’d put on two cardigans to fend off the brutal air conditioning.
“It’s all over a stupid typo.”
“I don’t know about that. Roy titled the meeting ‘Big Emergency Meeting’, which sounds a lot more serious than a typo.” Harriet rebuffed whilst pulling on some woollen gloves.
“That’s because he’s overreacting and won’t listen. Again.”
The conference room was beyond its proper capacity by that stage, brimming with colleagues who never normally needed to be in the same place at the same time. Generally, mass briefings were avoided to prevent tribal warfare breaking out between divisions. Last time, one of the administrative support team tried to garrotte a sales rep using a chain of paperclips, and it was decided that four separate instances could no longer be called a one-off. Laura noted with a mixture of relief and concern that all of the sales team were wearing their collars high.
“If Roy would just close the report source file…”
“He’s got bigger things than that on his mind.” Harriet said. She gasped suddenly. “What if he’s taking away the kettle?!”
Laura looked up at the expression of mortal peril etched onto Harriet’s face.
“Whilst difficult to justify and certainly self-destructive, I don’t think that constitutes a Big Emergency, much less the kind that requires a meeting.” Laura opined. Harriet didn’t look convinced but Laura couldn’t face dealing with it right then. Besides, she had to admit that the mood within the room was of ‘threat-to-tea-making’ proportions. Despite the vast over-population of the meeting room, including the receptionist trying to hide her colleague making an ‘anti-sales-team’ shiv with an HB pencil, there was an air of tense anxiety and uncomfortable quiet. Everyone was expecting something major.
“Settle down everyone!” Barked the voice that vetoed a hundred good ideas. What muttered conversation there was in the room died out, leaving only the commanding stomp of Roy, proprietor of R.P. Bulb Solutions, and the quiet scratching of a wireless mouse being whittled into a makeshift blade. The sea of personnel parted before Roy and he was immediately at the front of the crowd.
“Someone get this set up for me.” He ordered, dropping his laptop onto the unsuspecting fingers resting on the table. A hissed inhalation of sudden pain was the only utterance; there was no sympathy to be gained from Roy. “Everyone, I have some troubling news for you. As you are all aware, Laura Grassham sends me a daily metrics report covering sales record, stock prices, major developments against targets, and how many mugs have been broken, stolen or otherwise mistreated.”
Laura cringed at what was coming. She tried desperately to catch Roy’s eye and dissuade him from airing her mistakes for all to see, but as usual he was talking about her, not to her. Meanwhile, Tony from Business Development guiltily felt at the fragments of broken ceramic in his pocket; it was the third time this week, despite promising himself ‘never again’.
“This report goes to all of the department heads so that the bucking-up of ideas can occur unilaterally, but what we saw in the report this morning was significantly more rattling even than last month’s record-breaking mug loss.”
Tony stifled a choke and tried not to think about the porcelain powder that filled his bottom desk drawer.
“Roy, please. I can explain and fix-” Laura tried to interject.
“Brace yourselves for a sh-argh!” Roy exclaimed as the projector flared into life, shining laser-bright light into his face and casting his laptop’s display onto the screen behind him. The Roy-shaped silhouette in the middle appeared to be in some discomfort. “Just show the report.” He blustered while rubbing at his assaulted eyes. The head of Payroll, Harris Hove, accepted that he was now acting as Roy’s personal assistant and brought Laura’s report up.
An exhibition of charts and numbers covered the wall. Laura knew it all inside and out, mostly because it didn’t change much day-by-day, and the error glowed out at her like a beacon of pure failure.
“Look at this!” Roy said with grandeur, blinking away the after-images burned onto his retinas and pointing directly at Laura’s mistake. “Where the date was expected to read as August 25th 2019, we can see clearly that it in fact says August 25th 2020!”
There was silence in the room. Eyes turned from the display to Laura, picking up considerable pity as they did so, and then shed all emotion again as they travelled to Roy’s intense expression. Like an elastic band being stretched over an entire drawer’s worth of socks, the tension in the room grew up to creaking point.
“Do you all understand what this means?” Roy asked gravely. Laura’s apprehension and anxiety morphed slowly into indignant anger. How dare he put her on parade like this, in front of the whole company, over nothing more than a simple, honest typo? Who did he think he was and what arrogance did he possess to think that this was so shameful and important to require a public trial? Larua knew that she would, and indeed had, put up with a lot from Roy, but this was an attempt at needless humiliation and she wouldn’t sit there to just take it.
“It was just a mi-” she started, but Roy was still exercising his usual social tact.
“We have travelled forwards through time!” He bellowed. Gasps filled the conference room.
“What?” Laura managed.
“We flew too close to the Sun. I knew we were on the leading edge of supplier-to-manufacturer distribution and re-selling of components and materials for the light-bulb industry, defining the future of the business every day, but even I could scarcely imagine such extreme consequences of our envelope-pushing.”
The room burst into a hubbub of questions.
“Is it really true Roy?” Asked one of the sales team.
“I didn’t feel a thing!”
“Do mugs travel safely through time?”
“Laura must be a soothsayer.”
“This is unbelievable, but at least the kettle’s safe.” Harriet added, wrapping a scarf around her neck.
“Look at the metrics sheet yourselves if you don’t believe me. It’s there as clear as day.” Roy challenged with raised hands and raised voice to regain his control of the crowd. Murmurs of shocked agreement swept through the staff.
“I checked the date on the sheet against the time and date quoted by the computer.” Jamie recounted. “They didn’t match.”
Laura felt a surge of relief mixed in with a tiny bit of fear at the repercussions. At least logic was prevailing from someone.
“But then I thought that no, Laura’s metrics are always dead accurate, and so I changed the system to match it.” He said with the nervous pride of someone who suspects that their deeds are good, but doesn’t have much confidence in anyone else seeing it that way.
“Good work Jamie. That’s the kind of reactive agility that I like around here. It keeps the lights on.” Roy congratulated, much to Jamie’s relief.
“No! This is nonsense!” Laura shouted. Events were escalating in that uniquely ‘Roy’ way that carried the rest of the staff with it, generating an awful lot of work and heartache for everyone as it went. Except for him, of course. “I just made a typo when I was entering the date. That’s all!”
Roy turned a steely gaze at her, the kind of gaze which had haggled over filament prices for twenty years.
“Now Laura, I know it’s hard to accept this news; you probably had several house plants back in the past who you loved very much.” Roy consoled “But the metrics show the date quite clearly, and there are ten-year gaps in all of the historical tracking plots. We have definitely travelled through time.”
There were nods from around the conference room. One of them was intended to be the signal to launch an all-out attack on the sales team, but it got lost among the noise.
"But we all know that you double-check the report before it goes out, so that there are no mistakes.” He said, more softly. Unless, of course, you didn’t double-check it this time?”
All she needed to do was admit she’d rushed the date because her phone had been ringing, and this insanity would stop. She knew this shared delusion wouldn’t last forever, or withstand even casual scrutiny. But Laura stared up into the face that sank a thousand well-made plans on a whim, the towering, looming face that held her job in the balance with its unbroken eye-contact, and all else went dark. There was only judgement and fear. Her courage deserted her.
“Oh… yeah, I definitely double-checked it.” She claimed, weakly.
A cacophony of further gasps, exclamations and improvised weaponry creation erupted as Roy spread his arms wide in triumph. His whole body screamed ‘Well, there you have it, we’ve travelled through time and there’s no other explanation for it’, with the exception of his mouth, which didn’t need to get involved this time. Roy had very expressive arms when necessary.
Laura told herself that it had been an act of defiance, that she was doing it to test Roy’s commitment to this exaggerated bullying tactic. Her elevated heart-rate contradicted such an assertion, but Laura never took the testimony of pulmonary organs too seriously because they made all the blood rush to her head.
“What are we going to do?” Pleaded Beryl from reception. She’d conference called in for the occasion, since the front couldn’t be left unattended.
“We need to find out what the world out there is like now. Could be that there are unexplained piles of mug parts all over the streets that no-one, under any circumstances, should question.” Tony suggested opportunistically, thinking about the box of evidence he’d stashed in the store room.
“No, we just need to change tac; our goods are ten years old now, so we re-brand as offering retro and vintage parts for up-market manufacturers.” Proposed Leighton, one of the sales reps. His neck was scarred from two separate garrotting attempts at the hands of the admin team.
“Old lightbulb parts are famously inefficient compared to new ones, though. There’re probably laws against selling our current stock now.” Harriet countered from underneath a woolly hat with ear flaps. She’d also started shooting looks towards the thermostat and formed a plot to crank it up.
“We just mark them as ‘Not for household use’ then. Then we’re covered whatever the user decides to do with it.”
A worried mumble from Hayley, their resident quality assurance executive, attracted the attention of everyone except the administrative support team, who were sneaking up behind the sales cohort with a chair raised overhead. Considering how cramped the room was, this was a significant achievement.
“Spit it out, Hayley. What box haven’t we ticked with a regulation check-mark?” Roy demanded irritably. He’d argued against any form of quality assurance at all because, he said, if the customer didn’t like what they got then they shouldn’t have bought it in the first place. Unfortunately for him he’d been forced to back down when the law had a different perspective.
“I was following up Tony’s suggestion to learn about the outside world, and I tried to google ‘the news, please’ but I can’t access the internet.” Hayley relayed. “The system says it can’t do it!”
There were concerned murmurs from all sides.
“It’s probably because there’s a whole new future internet out there now. It’ll connect via our brainwaves or blood or something. Or our eyes!” Harriet speculated blindly. Laura despaired; she’d never thought of her friend as being that much of a fear-monger. Then again, she’d also never thought her other colleagues were quite so stupid. Close to it, but not quite.
“No-one’s making me pour my blood into one of those machines.” Beryl defied. “Or giving it my eyes.”
“If you want to stay on the company network then you’ll need to abide by whatever the updated guidelines say.” Jamie informed her. “Er… probably.” He added nervously once he remembered himself.
“Just you try to take it from me pointdexter.” Beryl growled. The sound of a chair crashing to the floor and wood subsequently splintering filled every inch of the conference room. A selection of administrative supporters tried to act nonchalant under the suspicious gazes of the sales team.
“Uh, anyway the reason Hayley can’t get on is because her browser is having a ‘Time and Date Mismatch Error’. Jamie said, jumping on the chance to change the subject.
“Even more proof that we’re in the future!” Jane said with mounting excitement. “This is going to make our tax situation quite deliciously complicated, but we have almost certainly got a case for claiming back eight months of our unused insurance fees and business tax rates. And our invested money has been accruing interest for a decade!”
“And we’ll all have ten years of salary waiting for us in our accounts too, yeah?” Leighton asked, suddenly taking things very seriously.
“I should hope not! You’ve done no work at all for those ten years.” Roy argued, getting red in the face at the prospect of such theft.
“I haven’t left the office for a whole decade. That’s worth full wages and weekend overtime at least.” Jamie declared, no longer interested in matters of network connectivity.
“The bloody cheek!”
“We almost certainly won’t have enough cash for ten years’ salary, especially without trading anything for that same period.” Jane warned emotionlessly.
“And, legally speaking, ten years of continuous work without a single lunch break is a big no-no. A big no-no indeed.” Cautioned Mary, the company’s HR advisor.
“We obviously haven’t been here for ten years or travelled through time.” Laura grumbled at them all. “The only reasonable interpretation of the metrics sheet is-”
“Sorcery!” Beryl shouted, her voluminous voice crackling through the phone’s speaker and finishing Laura’s sentence without consent. “I saw a program about Wiccans last ni- er, about ten years ago, and it’s bound to be them. Angry that we’re making candles irrelevant by using light bulbs I bet.”
Once again, Beryl’s train of thought pulled out of the station with no passengers.
“The nerve of you vultures.” Roy resumed, ignoring all non-monetary outbursts. “We’re time-travellers living in the world of the future and your first thoughts are to gouge me for money. They should be focused on how we can make a profit! At least Leighton had the right idea before turning to these notions of theft.”
“Calling your staff vultures for wanting to be paid puts you on rocky ground too.” Mary advised in futility.
“I’ll have none of your nonsense either. This is the future where no-one gets over-sensitive about silly things like name-calling or enforced poverty. We’ve all evolved beyond that haven’t we?” He asked, with one of his more openly threatening looks. A series of nods which worried for their continued employment ‘confirmed’ his assertion. “See, we’re a unified front, and that’s what we need to be in this unknown environment.” Roy said.
“Roy’s right. None of us have any idea what the outside world is like now. Ten years is a long time. There could have been an alien invasion or a great calamity that’s put the whole UK under water!” Harris said, stoking the flames. There was a silence built from disbelieving and above-all not-submerged faces. “OK, maybe not underwater, but still pretty disastrous.” He persisted. Any distraction was welcome to shift focus away from administrating 240 consecutive payments to each member of staff.
“Look how much Harriet’s wrapped up… it might be a nuclear winter.” Jamie joined in. Harriet tried to explain that her behaviour was mostly due to the air-conditioning, but her words were too muffled by the balaclava.
“All the more reason to stick together and work as a team for increased profits.” Roy re-asserted.
“If I know anything about the future it’s that tight-knit groups based on pre-disaster social orders always form and thrive.”
The room’s focus turned to Clara. She was the administrative support team’s fiercest member, and the dealer of all four previous garrotting attempts. From her waist she’d slung a club forged from staplers and sticky tape, and her team had pooled their make-up stocks to apply a war-paint of sorts across all of their faces.
“Uh, yes, quite so. Just as I was saying about a united front. One strong force to-”
“-purge the weaker members of our new post-apocalyptic society.” Clara finished for him. Reaching each of her hands up to the opposite shoulder she then tore off both sleeves of her blouse with a mighty roar, throwing the shredded fabric towards the sales team in as threatening a manner as she could. This turned out not to be quite as spectacular as she’d hoped, given that the thin cotton blouse sleeves didn’t fly well. They fluttered away in odd directions, one landing on the table and the other on the floor, but the point had been made. Leighton felt at the scars on his throat involuntarily. “The Adminotaurs will crush the sales weaklings in our labyrinth of pain!” She bellowed to cheers from the rest of the Adminotaurs. Laura watched the display with open-mouthed horror and disbelief; they must have already had the name planned.
“Is that what you call the travel booking system?” Shouted back Darryl, the lowest performing sales rep, to a chorus of guffaws. A well-aimed bola made from treasury tags and hole-punches caught him in the stomach and sent him doubled-over to the floor. The Adminotaurs whooped.
“This really goes against the unity I was aiming for so cut it out!” Roy yelled. All whooping and guffawing ceased. “There will be no gang warfare, no stratified society based on previously innocuous personal characteristics, and no purging of the sales team. We need them to make money. Is that clear?”
Generally affirmative mutters confirmed that it was clear, but Clara still made a stealthy dash to retrieve the bola.
“So, our options are to find out more about the world outside, be it a human utopia or a blood-internet nightmare, or completely flooded.”
“Or a nuclear winter.” Jamie reminded.
“Or a nuclear winter, yes. Or, alternatively, we just launch a new vintage lighting procurement and supply angle as Leighton suggested earlier”. Roy summarised.
“Or an outlandish third option like us still being in 2019 and the date on the report being wrong.” Laura said, frustration once again boiling over. Imbeciles surrounded her, dead-set on pursuing the most complicated and illogical course of action, and nobody was listening to sense. She sighed to herself. It wasn’t much different to normal.
“Then how would you explain the time and date mismatch when we tried to get online? Or Harriet’s nuclear winter clothing? Or the rise of the Adminotaurs?” Harris challenged with a nasty sneer. Laura had never seen him so emotionally invested in something other than payroll cut-off dates before. It was reassuring to know that she in fact could legitimately like the man even less.
“Jamie’s changes to the system date, Harriet’s apparent allergy to temperatures lower than twenty-five degrees, and dismissals that should have taken place years ago, respectively.” Laura spat back irritably.
“Yeah, no, I probably should have been fired years ago for all that assault in the workplace. Over ten years ago now, I suppose.” Clara agreed, with surprising grace and serenity for someone preparing cable-ties to be used as a set of shackles.
“And I was quite often cold before we travelled to the future.” Harriet tried to say. The continued muffling robbed everyone of the benefit.
“Pah, no-one likes a smart Alec, Laura. You’ve always got an answer for everything haven’t you?” Harris pouted.
“Yes, because I have given it at least cursory thought. Try it some time.”
“Or it’s all sorcery! One single explanation for all of these things rather than three convoluted and supposedly coincidental explanations. That’s just logic.” Beryl’s distorted voice added. There were no takers this time, either.
“Mary, is the sleeve tearing thing a violation of our dress code?” Roy asked surreptitiously whilst the others bickered.
“I don’t think so. Her shoulders are still covered.” Mary said. “But in any case, I think you have far greater conduct problems going on in here than that one. It’s low on the list.”
“Damn. Alright everyone we’re going over old ground here.” He snapped to the assembled crowd, feeling like he hadn’t talked sufficiently in the previous thirty seconds. “Everyone agreed that we must be in the future because Laura’s report said so and she double-checked it. End of discussion. Harris, strike your pointless bickering with Laura from the minutes.”
“I wasn’t taki-”
“Then write some minutes now and strike those comments off them right away!” He barked, exasperated at his subordinate’s lack of initiative. “We’re now discussing options on how we proceed, or we would be if everyone didn’t keep de-railing our meeting. But since you’re all too pre-occupied with attacking each other I’m making the call here and now myself.
“Laura: you’re making an inventory of all the supplies we have in the office to help us survive a post-apocalyptic scenario. Adminotaurs: you’re making sure that all calendars provide the correct date and you’re guarding the perimeter against any rival factions which may or may not exist outside these walls. Don’t disturb Beryl on the front desk though. Beryl: you’re to keep the phones answered when necessary and the front desk occupied as normal, but I’m also hearing a lot of talk from somewhere about Wiccans so you’d better look into that too. You’re best suited because you’re an old witch at the best of times.” Indeterminate sounds of conflicting emotions blared back through the speaker, and Harris muted it, much to Roy’s appreciation. “Sales: start finding buyers for our new line in vintage bulb parts and for goodness sake stay safe from those roving Adminotaurs. Everyone else: business as normal, but with ten years missing. Dismissed.” Roy ordered, having applied his typically careful and measured approach to planning and deployment.
“Roy, please, if you could just close the file for one minute I could fix this nonsense.” Laura begged. As much as Roy was fuelling insanity and wasting a whole work day already, taking an inventory of all the supplies on site sounded disastrously boring.
“I won’t hear another word of this ‘not-in-the-future’ tomfoolery.” Roy rebuffed. “You’re scared, we all are, but you double-checked the sheet. It must be right. Taking inventory will sort you out and level your head.”
“Bu-”
“Now, Laura.” He said with a severe finality that would have been better employed in preventing all that workplace assault committed by Clara. Laura’s instinctive fear took her off without another word.
“By the way, Mary?” Roy muttered when the conference room had mostly emptied. Mary sighed.
“Yes Roy?” She asked, wondering which particular aspect of employment law or human rights he was about to make plans to disregard.
“Does a decade of forward time travel count as Force Majeure for the sake of me not honouring ten years of back-pay or lunch breaks?”
Mary pondered. It was genuinely a reasonable point, and she felt a little bad about expecting the worst.
“Probably?” She decided. “I’ll look into it.”
“How about the next ten years?” Roy asked with a hopeful glint.
There it is, Mary thought.
“No. But I’ll check these futuristic laws just in case something has changed.” She conceded with a sigh.
“Top stuff. Off you go.”
Laura slumped forwards over her desk. Against every microscopic element of sense in her body she had an inventory spreadsheet open with a few line items and headings already populated. One-by-one she counted the monitors in front of her, stretching away into the main office.
“This is ridiculous, Laura. Just tell Roy that you forgot to check the date.”
She counted the monitors again.
“He’ll be annoyed that you lied to him, but it’s better than letting this madness continue, or than letting him work it out for himself.” A vision of Roy’s anger and Laura’s sudden termination flashed in front of her face. “Although it might not be…” She reconsidered, as a sickness in her stomach joined the fear.
The monitors were counted once more.
“God I’m an idiot. Why did I bother lying? He’ll kill me.”
Another monitor count.
Manic whooping, along with a tinny rumbling, snapped Laura out of her distracted self-pity. Careening into the office came Clara, riding a chariot of office chairs which had been barbed on all sides with staple removers and secured together twine from the post room. Apparently having been bowled along the office by the other Adminotaurs, the chariot wobbled uncertainly and scraped sharp staple-removing teeth along the edges of every desk along the way.
“Hello, scabs!” Clara squealed, swinging a mouse around her head like a crude flail. The other hand had a keyboard strapped to it as a shield. Papers and small ornaments went flying as the chariot screamed through the regular rows of desks, and those who were sitting too close to the edge were flung from their seats by harsh kicks from Clara’s apparently sharpened high heels. Laura knew that they were just collateral damage, however, and not the real targets.
“Welcome to the new order! Purge the weak! Fill in your travel booking forms correctly!” The Adminotaur’s leader shrieked, hair flying behind her as her chariot effortlessly covered the length of the office.
When it came, the strike was brutal and surgical. The mouse swung out on its thin, plastic, insulated cable, arced expertly behind the sales team's makeshift barricade, and crashed into the side of Leighton's head. Shrapnel exploded away from the mouse in a sunburst of black plastic chippings.
“Ha! Take that scab!” Clara cackled, riding her chariot away. Unfortunately for her, whatever futuristic technology she thought to have been built into the chair chariot was incapable of steering. The rear wall of the office stood defiantly in her path, and she hit it with a series of crunches. Laura hoped that most of them had come from the assembly of chairs, but if at least a few of them had come from Clara then they’d all be safer.
Those members of the sales team who were feeling brave and had escaped the shrapnel of the shattering mouse began to rise and approach the wreckage with vengeance in their eyes.
“Someone get the first aid kit. She might be hurt.” Laura shouted, starting to cross over to her. She was barely half way when a pack of sprinting Adminotaurs pushed past her, flinging her into a photocopier, to help their erstwhile leader. The sales team recoiled backwards into their cubby.
“There’ll be more where that came from!” Clara screeched from the pile of busted chair parts.
“For Christ’s sake, you’re not a post-apocalyptic warrior you’re a typist, Clara.” Laura shouted from her position atop of the printer’s out-tray.
“We’ve no argument with you, time traveller.” Said Dean, one of the Adminotaurs. He’d slashed his shirt’s arms into a billowing array of loose strips, because apparently clothing was the first thing to be ruined in the apocalypse and he wanted to fit in. “We’re here for the scabs, not for your techno-sorcery.”
“Stop calling the sales team scabs, it’s disgusting.” Laura replied, unable to process anything else Dean had said.
“Exactly. They’re scabs on a festering wound, and we’re the cure.” Clara clarified, back on her feet with some help from her clan. Now that she could get a clear look, it became clear to Laura that the stock of highlighters had come into play, adding a neon splash to the existing warpaint.
“That doesn’t even make sense. Are you alright?” She asked, determined to keep at least one voice of reason in the room.
“It takes more than that to fell an Adminotaur!”
“What about Leighton? Not going to ask how the actual victim is?” Accused Darryl.
“Of course not! The time witch favours us!” Beryl’s voice crackled from a wireless phone strapped to Dean’s waist.
“Time witch? Where the crap did that come from?” Laura growled.
“It’s obvious that you’re the Wiccan who ensorcelled us through time. I’ve read all about it for the last twelve minutes.” Beryl answered. Laura couldn’t help but appreciate that the microphone on Dean’s wireless phone was incredibly impressive. “It came from the enchanted spreadsheet you sent around.”
The will to argue was lost in the frustration that had solidified inside Laura’s chest. Despite her protestations, the group delusion was only getting worse.
“I’m fine, by the way.” Leighton said, breaking the silence in an unhelpful way.
“Good.”
“I mean, we’re just over here trying to keep the business afloat in an unknown future market, and doing a great job of it. No need to worry about us.”
“Then I won’t.” Laura snapped. “But I also won’t stand for this…” she indicated towards Clara’s wreckage and couldn’t find a word for it “… going on.”
Dean and the other Adminotaurs flinched backwards whilst Clara just narrowed her eyes.
“Won’t you?” She asked softly.
“Don’t goad her.” Dean warned in a panic. “Beryl says she could be capable of anything.”
“No, I won’t stand for it, because it’s assault! Again! You keep doing it and it is literally a crime!”
“Ah, she’s a lawful witch. That bodes well for us.” Leighton declared. He ducked as a staple remover sped through the air towards him.
“That’s not OK either, Clara.” Laura pointed out.
“She might send us back through time.” Harriet shouted over. She was jammed immovably between her chair and her desk on account of the volume of jackets she’d forced onto her torso.
“Please, Clara, don’t goad her. We’d be back in the sadness of the old times.” Dean whispered hoarsely.
Clara kept staring at Laura for a moment, but said nothing.
“Come on, Adminotaurs. Let the witch take her rage out on the scabs instead of us.” She ordered, leading a dash out of the office. The others followed close behind, carrying as much of the chariot as they could salvage and leaving a small pile of shredded tape and castor wheels.
“I wish I could send them all back through friggin’ time.” Laura muttered to herself, walking back to her waiting inventory.
“You know I’ve always respected you, right?” Harriet asked nervously.
“Are you saying that you really believe I’m a time witch?”
Harriet nodded as much as the series of hoods, collars and scarves would allow.
“Then yes. We’ll go with yes.”
“It’s a miracle you’ve never used your magic on Roy, really. If you’re that powerful then you could make him do anything.”
“Except listen to me, apparently.” Laura lamented distractedly. She counted the monitors again. A thought was starting to form.
Laura rushed to Roy’s office and saw with despair, but not exactly surprise, that he’d had his door covered with tin foil. ‘Roy Pearl. Future Boss’ read a marker pen sign across the top.
She knocked, and it sounded far more crinkly than normal.
“We don’t knock in the future.” Roy shouted from inside. “We beep.”
“Can I come in, Roy? It’s Laura. I have important information.”
“You need to beep, Laura.” He repeated.
“But why?”
“There’s one rule for everyone and it has to be obeyed. You beep, or I don’t know you’re there.”
Roy heard a heavy sigh.
“Beep.” Laura said without enthusiasm.
“Enter!”
Laura turned the same squeaky handle that had plagued Roy’s office in the past.
“Ah, Laura. I didn’t recognise your beep, but there are first times for everything. What do you need?” He asked. Laura was taken aback. Not just because he seemed to be making an effort welcome her and ask what she needed, but also because the door was not the only victim of a run-by foiling. Everything in the room, from the chairs to the carpet to the desk ornaments had been thoroughly covered in tin foil. The whole office shone with bright silver from the light that bled in through the window, and it hurt to have her eyes open. But there was another reason for ocular discomfort.
“I see you’re overawed by my futuristic office. Rooms like this are perfectly commonplace in the future. I mean, now. Yes, now.” Roy decided.
“It’s your suit that really took me by surprise.”
Roy looked down at himself. He saw nothing unusual, but supposed that Laura was still having trouble adjusting.
“We both know that everything is shiny and silver in the future, Laura. That includes fine single-breasted suits.”
Apparently, it did indeed include suits where Roy was concerned. His whole suit glittered with thousands of tiny creases from every movement he’d made. He looked a lot like a discarded sandwich.
“I have important news about the future thing.” Laura said, choosing not to engage with Roy’s décor and fashion choices any further than she already had.
“Then you’ve calmed down and accepted that we are, obviously, ten years into the future?” Roy quizzed, making it perfectly clear that only one answer would be acceptable.
“Sure. Why not. But there’s a snag.”
Roy’s expression iced over.
“We’ve been through this, Laura.”
“I know. I agree. There are always paradoxes with time travel though, aren’t there?” She said.
“…go on…” he said reluctantly. This sounded a lot like past-talk to him, but paradoxes were mentioned in all the good time travel sci-fi.
“So I was thinking that when I made the report, I started off in the past.” Laura started slowly. Roy nodded. So far so good. “And when I was done we were obviously in the future, because the date said so. That’s well established at this stage.”
“Well established.” Roy repeated, to feel like he was contributing.
“But that means that my double-checking may have been either side of the travel. I might have only entered the date in the past and checked it in the future. That means the date was never double-checked for the report at the right time.” Laura explained. Roy raised a hand to his chin and scratched it thoughtfully. The foil suit crinkled noisily and shot brief reflections into Laura’s eyes.
“But it means you did still perform a double-check and the date still stands. It doesn’t change the fact that we’re in the future.” Roy reasoned.
“Maybe, but it might also mean that the original date was entered wrong, and that we didn’t get a chance to check it at the time. So we’re at risk of being in the future and the past at the same time, until we check and work it out. ”
“The same time eh? Two markets to exploit then!” Roy decided, dealing a solid blow to Laura’s expectations.
“Er… no… no it’s not a good thing.”
“Why on Earth do you say that?”
“Because…” she said, drawing the word out to buy time. “…because you’ll have to pay two lots of wages!” Roy’s eyes widened immediately. “And two lots of pensions. Everyone has been working for ten years longer already in the future, and they’re working in two years at the same time right now. That’s twice as much progress towards retirement age.”
“This is dire!” Roy said, suddenly panicked with all resistance to Laura’s assertions gone. “How could it possibly have happened?”
“Beryl’s research had brought something up.” Laura said, hating herself for giving any credit to Wiccans being held responsible for anything except increased candle and feather sales. “She has concluded that a time-witch must have cast a spell to send us forwards. But I think that breaking the paradox could send us back to a time of single wage packets and an eternity until retirement.”
“Do it.” Roy said immediately. “There’s no way I’m giving these maggots a penny more than they’ve earned.”
Laura waited for him to say ‘present company excluded’, but it eventually became clear that it wasn’t going to happen.
“Right. Well, first I need you to close the metric sheet. Then I’ll go back to my desk, because the spell must have been cast there, obviously, and I’ll change the sheet.”
“Yes, obviously it must have been.” Roy agreed. If it was obvious then he couldn’t well argue over it, he reasoned. “OK. I’ll close it. Erm, do you think it’s OK for future computer screens not to have foil over them if I want to look at what’s on it?” He asked with almost child-like sincerity.
“Yes, Roy. That should be fine.” Laura said, spinning on her heel and fleeing before Roy changed his mind.
Back at her desk, Laura didn’t even bother to sit down. She opened the metrics sheet and corrected her typo, this time remembering to double-check that she hadn’t sent them backwards by a few days too many, and closed it straight away. Roy appeared over her shoulder, like a man-lighthouse reflecting all of the ceiling lights, barely a few seconds later.
“I thought it best to see this for myself.” He said gravely.
“Oh. Yes, definitely. Let’s open it now and check, shall we? Remember, this will definitely break the spell and send us back to our own time if it says the date we expect.”
“Yes of course! I’m not an idiot!” Roy claimed with ill-placed confidence. Laura heard a deeply muffled laugh from Harriet, but thankfully Roy missed it.
“Here goes…” she said, clicking the icon. There was a tense loading time, during which Laura noticed the smell of several space heaters coming from Harriet’s direction.
“My goodness!” Roy exclaimed as the sheet popped up. “It worked! We’re back in our own time! Good work Laura.”
“Just doing my job.” She said modestly. Idiot-wrangling had never been explicitly in her job description.
“You did it bloody well. It means I can take off this damned foil suit for a start!” He said, tearing thin aluminium away with both hands.
“I think we’re all grateful for that.” Laura agreed. She couldn’t hear any response from Roy, however, because a battle-wail echoed through the office. All heads turned to see the familiar form of the Adminotaurs’ chariot, but this time it was being drawn by…
“Oh gods…” Laura said.
“Is that… Darryl?” Roy asked incredulously.
“Yes sir. And Leighton.”
“The scabs will always bow to us!” Clara shrieked triumphantly, standing on her chariot and lashing the two sales reps with her shattered mouse flail. They’d been harnessed to it using an unsanitary quantity of sticky tape, and marched as a pair between the desks.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at!”
“The future is ours! It belongs to the Adminotaurs!” Clara announced.
“This isn’t the future, it’s the present! We broke the time-witch’s spell.” Roy said, as if it should have been patently obvious to any casual observer. Silence descended onto the office as an existential uplift hit everyone for the second time that day. “This kind of behaviour is not what I expect of professionals.”
Behind all the war-paint, Laura thought she could see Clara blush. She couldn’t even begin to express her satisfaction that the administrative support team’s violent tendencies were getting addressed.
“You’re supposed to be securing sales, not pulling chairs around. Get back to it and stop distracting the Adminotaurs from their work. Good name for a team that, Clara. Well chosen.”
Laura sat down hard in her seat. Of all the things they could have brought back from the future, the Adminotaurs were not what she would have chosen. They seemed pleased with themselves however, and Clara gave the sales reps an additional admonishing lash. Roy nodded approvingly.
“Back to business as normal then?” Laura asked.
“Of course! We have bulb parts to sell.” Roy confirmed. He paused for a moment. “But you should still complete that inventory for me. Best be prepared in case of another time-witch incident.”
“Yes Roy.” Laura said with a sigh.
Yet again, she counted the monitors.
Other people from all around the office kept piling into the main conference room wearing anxious expressions in addition to their normal attire. Jane from accounts took a seat with her coloured pens and alphabetised notebook, and next to her sat Jamie, the I.T. support trainee. He fidgeted nervously with a USB flash drive which immediately and deeply irritated Jane to the point of not one but two indignant sighs. Pretty soon they would hit eye-contact and scowl territory. Laura opened her laptop and tried again to edit the daily metrics spreadsheet, slamming the lid shut when, once more, an unyielding dialogue box told her that the file was locked by another user.
“I know how you feel, Laura. This meeting request has everyone worried.” Consoled Harriet, another member of Laura’s team. She’d put on two cardigans to fend off the brutal air conditioning.
“It’s all over a stupid typo.”
“I don’t know about that. Roy titled the meeting ‘Big Emergency Meeting’, which sounds a lot more serious than a typo.” Harriet rebuffed whilst pulling on some woollen gloves.
“That’s because he’s overreacting and won’t listen. Again.”
The conference room was beyond its proper capacity by that stage, brimming with colleagues who never normally needed to be in the same place at the same time. Generally, mass briefings were avoided to prevent tribal warfare breaking out between divisions. Last time, one of the administrative support team tried to garrotte a sales rep using a chain of paperclips, and it was decided that four separate instances could no longer be called a one-off. Laura noted with a mixture of relief and concern that all of the sales team were wearing their collars high.
“If Roy would just close the report source file…”
“He’s got bigger things than that on his mind.” Harriet said. She gasped suddenly. “What if he’s taking away the kettle?!”
Laura looked up at the expression of mortal peril etched onto Harriet’s face.
“Whilst difficult to justify and certainly self-destructive, I don’t think that constitutes a Big Emergency, much less the kind that requires a meeting.” Laura opined. Harriet didn’t look convinced but Laura couldn’t face dealing with it right then. Besides, she had to admit that the mood within the room was of ‘threat-to-tea-making’ proportions. Despite the vast over-population of the meeting room, including the receptionist trying to hide her colleague making an ‘anti-sales-team’ shiv with an HB pencil, there was an air of tense anxiety and uncomfortable quiet. Everyone was expecting something major.
“Settle down everyone!” Barked the voice that vetoed a hundred good ideas. What muttered conversation there was in the room died out, leaving only the commanding stomp of Roy, proprietor of R.P. Bulb Solutions, and the quiet scratching of a wireless mouse being whittled into a makeshift blade. The sea of personnel parted before Roy and he was immediately at the front of the crowd.
“Someone get this set up for me.” He ordered, dropping his laptop onto the unsuspecting fingers resting on the table. A hissed inhalation of sudden pain was the only utterance; there was no sympathy to be gained from Roy. “Everyone, I have some troubling news for you. As you are all aware, Laura Grassham sends me a daily metrics report covering sales record, stock prices, major developments against targets, and how many mugs have been broken, stolen or otherwise mistreated.”
Laura cringed at what was coming. She tried desperately to catch Roy’s eye and dissuade him from airing her mistakes for all to see, but as usual he was talking about her, not to her. Meanwhile, Tony from Business Development guiltily felt at the fragments of broken ceramic in his pocket; it was the third time this week, despite promising himself ‘never again’.
“This report goes to all of the department heads so that the bucking-up of ideas can occur unilaterally, but what we saw in the report this morning was significantly more rattling even than last month’s record-breaking mug loss.”
Tony stifled a choke and tried not to think about the porcelain powder that filled his bottom desk drawer.
“Roy, please. I can explain and fix-” Laura tried to interject.
“Brace yourselves for a sh-argh!” Roy exclaimed as the projector flared into life, shining laser-bright light into his face and casting his laptop’s display onto the screen behind him. The Roy-shaped silhouette in the middle appeared to be in some discomfort. “Just show the report.” He blustered while rubbing at his assaulted eyes. The head of Payroll, Harris Hove, accepted that he was now acting as Roy’s personal assistant and brought Laura’s report up.
An exhibition of charts and numbers covered the wall. Laura knew it all inside and out, mostly because it didn’t change much day-by-day, and the error glowed out at her like a beacon of pure failure.
“Look at this!” Roy said with grandeur, blinking away the after-images burned onto his retinas and pointing directly at Laura’s mistake. “Where the date was expected to read as August 25th 2019, we can see clearly that it in fact says August 25th 2020!”
There was silence in the room. Eyes turned from the display to Laura, picking up considerable pity as they did so, and then shed all emotion again as they travelled to Roy’s intense expression. Like an elastic band being stretched over an entire drawer’s worth of socks, the tension in the room grew up to creaking point.
“Do you all understand what this means?” Roy asked gravely. Laura’s apprehension and anxiety morphed slowly into indignant anger. How dare he put her on parade like this, in front of the whole company, over nothing more than a simple, honest typo? Who did he think he was and what arrogance did he possess to think that this was so shameful and important to require a public trial? Larua knew that she would, and indeed had, put up with a lot from Roy, but this was an attempt at needless humiliation and she wouldn’t sit there to just take it.
“It was just a mi-” she started, but Roy was still exercising his usual social tact.
“We have travelled forwards through time!” He bellowed. Gasps filled the conference room.
“What?” Laura managed.
“We flew too close to the Sun. I knew we were on the leading edge of supplier-to-manufacturer distribution and re-selling of components and materials for the light-bulb industry, defining the future of the business every day, but even I could scarcely imagine such extreme consequences of our envelope-pushing.”
The room burst into a hubbub of questions.
“Is it really true Roy?” Asked one of the sales team.
“I didn’t feel a thing!”
“Do mugs travel safely through time?”
“Laura must be a soothsayer.”
“This is unbelievable, but at least the kettle’s safe.” Harriet added, wrapping a scarf around her neck.
“Look at the metrics sheet yourselves if you don’t believe me. It’s there as clear as day.” Roy challenged with raised hands and raised voice to regain his control of the crowd. Murmurs of shocked agreement swept through the staff.
“I checked the date on the sheet against the time and date quoted by the computer.” Jamie recounted. “They didn’t match.”
Laura felt a surge of relief mixed in with a tiny bit of fear at the repercussions. At least logic was prevailing from someone.
“But then I thought that no, Laura’s metrics are always dead accurate, and so I changed the system to match it.” He said with the nervous pride of someone who suspects that their deeds are good, but doesn’t have much confidence in anyone else seeing it that way.
“Good work Jamie. That’s the kind of reactive agility that I like around here. It keeps the lights on.” Roy congratulated, much to Jamie’s relief.
“No! This is nonsense!” Laura shouted. Events were escalating in that uniquely ‘Roy’ way that carried the rest of the staff with it, generating an awful lot of work and heartache for everyone as it went. Except for him, of course. “I just made a typo when I was entering the date. That’s all!”
Roy turned a steely gaze at her, the kind of gaze which had haggled over filament prices for twenty years.
“Now Laura, I know it’s hard to accept this news; you probably had several house plants back in the past who you loved very much.” Roy consoled “But the metrics show the date quite clearly, and there are ten-year gaps in all of the historical tracking plots. We have definitely travelled through time.”
There were nods from around the conference room. One of them was intended to be the signal to launch an all-out attack on the sales team, but it got lost among the noise.
"But we all know that you double-check the report before it goes out, so that there are no mistakes.” He said, more softly. Unless, of course, you didn’t double-check it this time?”
All she needed to do was admit she’d rushed the date because her phone had been ringing, and this insanity would stop. She knew this shared delusion wouldn’t last forever, or withstand even casual scrutiny. But Laura stared up into the face that sank a thousand well-made plans on a whim, the towering, looming face that held her job in the balance with its unbroken eye-contact, and all else went dark. There was only judgement and fear. Her courage deserted her.
“Oh… yeah, I definitely double-checked it.” She claimed, weakly.
A cacophony of further gasps, exclamations and improvised weaponry creation erupted as Roy spread his arms wide in triumph. His whole body screamed ‘Well, there you have it, we’ve travelled through time and there’s no other explanation for it’, with the exception of his mouth, which didn’t need to get involved this time. Roy had very expressive arms when necessary.
Laura told herself that it had been an act of defiance, that she was doing it to test Roy’s commitment to this exaggerated bullying tactic. Her elevated heart-rate contradicted such an assertion, but Laura never took the testimony of pulmonary organs too seriously because they made all the blood rush to her head.
“What are we going to do?” Pleaded Beryl from reception. She’d conference called in for the occasion, since the front couldn’t be left unattended.
“We need to find out what the world out there is like now. Could be that there are unexplained piles of mug parts all over the streets that no-one, under any circumstances, should question.” Tony suggested opportunistically, thinking about the box of evidence he’d stashed in the store room.
“No, we just need to change tac; our goods are ten years old now, so we re-brand as offering retro and vintage parts for up-market manufacturers.” Proposed Leighton, one of the sales reps. His neck was scarred from two separate garrotting attempts at the hands of the admin team.
“Old lightbulb parts are famously inefficient compared to new ones, though. There’re probably laws against selling our current stock now.” Harriet countered from underneath a woolly hat with ear flaps. She’d also started shooting looks towards the thermostat and formed a plot to crank it up.
“We just mark them as ‘Not for household use’ then. Then we’re covered whatever the user decides to do with it.”
A worried mumble from Hayley, their resident quality assurance executive, attracted the attention of everyone except the administrative support team, who were sneaking up behind the sales cohort with a chair raised overhead. Considering how cramped the room was, this was a significant achievement.
“Spit it out, Hayley. What box haven’t we ticked with a regulation check-mark?” Roy demanded irritably. He’d argued against any form of quality assurance at all because, he said, if the customer didn’t like what they got then they shouldn’t have bought it in the first place. Unfortunately for him he’d been forced to back down when the law had a different perspective.
“I was following up Tony’s suggestion to learn about the outside world, and I tried to google ‘the news, please’ but I can’t access the internet.” Hayley relayed. “The system says it can’t do it!”
There were concerned murmurs from all sides.
“It’s probably because there’s a whole new future internet out there now. It’ll connect via our brainwaves or blood or something. Or our eyes!” Harriet speculated blindly. Laura despaired; she’d never thought of her friend as being that much of a fear-monger. Then again, she’d also never thought her other colleagues were quite so stupid. Close to it, but not quite.
“No-one’s making me pour my blood into one of those machines.” Beryl defied. “Or giving it my eyes.”
“If you want to stay on the company network then you’ll need to abide by whatever the updated guidelines say.” Jamie informed her. “Er… probably.” He added nervously once he remembered himself.
“Just you try to take it from me pointdexter.” Beryl growled. The sound of a chair crashing to the floor and wood subsequently splintering filled every inch of the conference room. A selection of administrative supporters tried to act nonchalant under the suspicious gazes of the sales team.
“Uh, anyway the reason Hayley can’t get on is because her browser is having a ‘Time and Date Mismatch Error’. Jamie said, jumping on the chance to change the subject.
“Even more proof that we’re in the future!” Jane said with mounting excitement. “This is going to make our tax situation quite deliciously complicated, but we have almost certainly got a case for claiming back eight months of our unused insurance fees and business tax rates. And our invested money has been accruing interest for a decade!”
“And we’ll all have ten years of salary waiting for us in our accounts too, yeah?” Leighton asked, suddenly taking things very seriously.
“I should hope not! You’ve done no work at all for those ten years.” Roy argued, getting red in the face at the prospect of such theft.
“I haven’t left the office for a whole decade. That’s worth full wages and weekend overtime at least.” Jamie declared, no longer interested in matters of network connectivity.
“The bloody cheek!”
“We almost certainly won’t have enough cash for ten years’ salary, especially without trading anything for that same period.” Jane warned emotionlessly.
“And, legally speaking, ten years of continuous work without a single lunch break is a big no-no. A big no-no indeed.” Cautioned Mary, the company’s HR advisor.
“We obviously haven’t been here for ten years or travelled through time.” Laura grumbled at them all. “The only reasonable interpretation of the metrics sheet is-”
“Sorcery!” Beryl shouted, her voluminous voice crackling through the phone’s speaker and finishing Laura’s sentence without consent. “I saw a program about Wiccans last ni- er, about ten years ago, and it’s bound to be them. Angry that we’re making candles irrelevant by using light bulbs I bet.”
Once again, Beryl’s train of thought pulled out of the station with no passengers.
“The nerve of you vultures.” Roy resumed, ignoring all non-monetary outbursts. “We’re time-travellers living in the world of the future and your first thoughts are to gouge me for money. They should be focused on how we can make a profit! At least Leighton had the right idea before turning to these notions of theft.”
“Calling your staff vultures for wanting to be paid puts you on rocky ground too.” Mary advised in futility.
“I’ll have none of your nonsense either. This is the future where no-one gets over-sensitive about silly things like name-calling or enforced poverty. We’ve all evolved beyond that haven’t we?” He asked, with one of his more openly threatening looks. A series of nods which worried for their continued employment ‘confirmed’ his assertion. “See, we’re a unified front, and that’s what we need to be in this unknown environment.” Roy said.
“Roy’s right. None of us have any idea what the outside world is like now. Ten years is a long time. There could have been an alien invasion or a great calamity that’s put the whole UK under water!” Harris said, stoking the flames. There was a silence built from disbelieving and above-all not-submerged faces. “OK, maybe not underwater, but still pretty disastrous.” He persisted. Any distraction was welcome to shift focus away from administrating 240 consecutive payments to each member of staff.
“Look how much Harriet’s wrapped up… it might be a nuclear winter.” Jamie joined in. Harriet tried to explain that her behaviour was mostly due to the air-conditioning, but her words were too muffled by the balaclava.
“All the more reason to stick together and work as a team for increased profits.” Roy re-asserted.
“If I know anything about the future it’s that tight-knit groups based on pre-disaster social orders always form and thrive.”
The room’s focus turned to Clara. She was the administrative support team’s fiercest member, and the dealer of all four previous garrotting attempts. From her waist she’d slung a club forged from staplers and sticky tape, and her team had pooled their make-up stocks to apply a war-paint of sorts across all of their faces.
“Uh, yes, quite so. Just as I was saying about a united front. One strong force to-”
“-purge the weaker members of our new post-apocalyptic society.” Clara finished for him. Reaching each of her hands up to the opposite shoulder she then tore off both sleeves of her blouse with a mighty roar, throwing the shredded fabric towards the sales team in as threatening a manner as she could. This turned out not to be quite as spectacular as she’d hoped, given that the thin cotton blouse sleeves didn’t fly well. They fluttered away in odd directions, one landing on the table and the other on the floor, but the point had been made. Leighton felt at the scars on his throat involuntarily. “The Adminotaurs will crush the sales weaklings in our labyrinth of pain!” She bellowed to cheers from the rest of the Adminotaurs. Laura watched the display with open-mouthed horror and disbelief; they must have already had the name planned.
“Is that what you call the travel booking system?” Shouted back Darryl, the lowest performing sales rep, to a chorus of guffaws. A well-aimed bola made from treasury tags and hole-punches caught him in the stomach and sent him doubled-over to the floor. The Adminotaurs whooped.
“This really goes against the unity I was aiming for so cut it out!” Roy yelled. All whooping and guffawing ceased. “There will be no gang warfare, no stratified society based on previously innocuous personal characteristics, and no purging of the sales team. We need them to make money. Is that clear?”
Generally affirmative mutters confirmed that it was clear, but Clara still made a stealthy dash to retrieve the bola.
“So, our options are to find out more about the world outside, be it a human utopia or a blood-internet nightmare, or completely flooded.”
“Or a nuclear winter.” Jamie reminded.
“Or a nuclear winter, yes. Or, alternatively, we just launch a new vintage lighting procurement and supply angle as Leighton suggested earlier”. Roy summarised.
“Or an outlandish third option like us still being in 2019 and the date on the report being wrong.” Laura said, frustration once again boiling over. Imbeciles surrounded her, dead-set on pursuing the most complicated and illogical course of action, and nobody was listening to sense. She sighed to herself. It wasn’t much different to normal.
“Then how would you explain the time and date mismatch when we tried to get online? Or Harriet’s nuclear winter clothing? Or the rise of the Adminotaurs?” Harris challenged with a nasty sneer. Laura had never seen him so emotionally invested in something other than payroll cut-off dates before. It was reassuring to know that she in fact could legitimately like the man even less.
“Jamie’s changes to the system date, Harriet’s apparent allergy to temperatures lower than twenty-five degrees, and dismissals that should have taken place years ago, respectively.” Laura spat back irritably.
“Yeah, no, I probably should have been fired years ago for all that assault in the workplace. Over ten years ago now, I suppose.” Clara agreed, with surprising grace and serenity for someone preparing cable-ties to be used as a set of shackles.
“And I was quite often cold before we travelled to the future.” Harriet tried to say. The continued muffling robbed everyone of the benefit.
“Pah, no-one likes a smart Alec, Laura. You’ve always got an answer for everything haven’t you?” Harris pouted.
“Yes, because I have given it at least cursory thought. Try it some time.”
“Or it’s all sorcery! One single explanation for all of these things rather than three convoluted and supposedly coincidental explanations. That’s just logic.” Beryl’s distorted voice added. There were no takers this time, either.
“Mary, is the sleeve tearing thing a violation of our dress code?” Roy asked surreptitiously whilst the others bickered.
“I don’t think so. Her shoulders are still covered.” Mary said. “But in any case, I think you have far greater conduct problems going on in here than that one. It’s low on the list.”
“Damn. Alright everyone we’re going over old ground here.” He snapped to the assembled crowd, feeling like he hadn’t talked sufficiently in the previous thirty seconds. “Everyone agreed that we must be in the future because Laura’s report said so and she double-checked it. End of discussion. Harris, strike your pointless bickering with Laura from the minutes.”
“I wasn’t taki-”
“Then write some minutes now and strike those comments off them right away!” He barked, exasperated at his subordinate’s lack of initiative. “We’re now discussing options on how we proceed, or we would be if everyone didn’t keep de-railing our meeting. But since you’re all too pre-occupied with attacking each other I’m making the call here and now myself.
“Laura: you’re making an inventory of all the supplies we have in the office to help us survive a post-apocalyptic scenario. Adminotaurs: you’re making sure that all calendars provide the correct date and you’re guarding the perimeter against any rival factions which may or may not exist outside these walls. Don’t disturb Beryl on the front desk though. Beryl: you’re to keep the phones answered when necessary and the front desk occupied as normal, but I’m also hearing a lot of talk from somewhere about Wiccans so you’d better look into that too. You’re best suited because you’re an old witch at the best of times.” Indeterminate sounds of conflicting emotions blared back through the speaker, and Harris muted it, much to Roy’s appreciation. “Sales: start finding buyers for our new line in vintage bulb parts and for goodness sake stay safe from those roving Adminotaurs. Everyone else: business as normal, but with ten years missing. Dismissed.” Roy ordered, having applied his typically careful and measured approach to planning and deployment.
“Roy, please, if you could just close the file for one minute I could fix this nonsense.” Laura begged. As much as Roy was fuelling insanity and wasting a whole work day already, taking an inventory of all the supplies on site sounded disastrously boring.
“I won’t hear another word of this ‘not-in-the-future’ tomfoolery.” Roy rebuffed. “You’re scared, we all are, but you double-checked the sheet. It must be right. Taking inventory will sort you out and level your head.”
“Bu-”
“Now, Laura.” He said with a severe finality that would have been better employed in preventing all that workplace assault committed by Clara. Laura’s instinctive fear took her off without another word.
“By the way, Mary?” Roy muttered when the conference room had mostly emptied. Mary sighed.
“Yes Roy?” She asked, wondering which particular aspect of employment law or human rights he was about to make plans to disregard.
“Does a decade of forward time travel count as Force Majeure for the sake of me not honouring ten years of back-pay or lunch breaks?”
Mary pondered. It was genuinely a reasonable point, and she felt a little bad about expecting the worst.
“Probably?” She decided. “I’ll look into it.”
“How about the next ten years?” Roy asked with a hopeful glint.
There it is, Mary thought.
“No. But I’ll check these futuristic laws just in case something has changed.” She conceded with a sigh.
“Top stuff. Off you go.”
Laura slumped forwards over her desk. Against every microscopic element of sense in her body she had an inventory spreadsheet open with a few line items and headings already populated. One-by-one she counted the monitors in front of her, stretching away into the main office.
“This is ridiculous, Laura. Just tell Roy that you forgot to check the date.”
She counted the monitors again.
“He’ll be annoyed that you lied to him, but it’s better than letting this madness continue, or than letting him work it out for himself.” A vision of Roy’s anger and Laura’s sudden termination flashed in front of her face. “Although it might not be…” She reconsidered, as a sickness in her stomach joined the fear.
The monitors were counted once more.
“God I’m an idiot. Why did I bother lying? He’ll kill me.”
Another monitor count.
Manic whooping, along with a tinny rumbling, snapped Laura out of her distracted self-pity. Careening into the office came Clara, riding a chariot of office chairs which had been barbed on all sides with staple removers and secured together twine from the post room. Apparently having been bowled along the office by the other Adminotaurs, the chariot wobbled uncertainly and scraped sharp staple-removing teeth along the edges of every desk along the way.
“Hello, scabs!” Clara squealed, swinging a mouse around her head like a crude flail. The other hand had a keyboard strapped to it as a shield. Papers and small ornaments went flying as the chariot screamed through the regular rows of desks, and those who were sitting too close to the edge were flung from their seats by harsh kicks from Clara’s apparently sharpened high heels. Laura knew that they were just collateral damage, however, and not the real targets.
“Welcome to the new order! Purge the weak! Fill in your travel booking forms correctly!” The Adminotaur’s leader shrieked, hair flying behind her as her chariot effortlessly covered the length of the office.
When it came, the strike was brutal and surgical. The mouse swung out on its thin, plastic, insulated cable, arced expertly behind the sales team's makeshift barricade, and crashed into the side of Leighton's head. Shrapnel exploded away from the mouse in a sunburst of black plastic chippings.
“Ha! Take that scab!” Clara cackled, riding her chariot away. Unfortunately for her, whatever futuristic technology she thought to have been built into the chair chariot was incapable of steering. The rear wall of the office stood defiantly in her path, and she hit it with a series of crunches. Laura hoped that most of them had come from the assembly of chairs, but if at least a few of them had come from Clara then they’d all be safer.
Those members of the sales team who were feeling brave and had escaped the shrapnel of the shattering mouse began to rise and approach the wreckage with vengeance in their eyes.
“Someone get the first aid kit. She might be hurt.” Laura shouted, starting to cross over to her. She was barely half way when a pack of sprinting Adminotaurs pushed past her, flinging her into a photocopier, to help their erstwhile leader. The sales team recoiled backwards into their cubby.
“There’ll be more where that came from!” Clara screeched from the pile of busted chair parts.
“For Christ’s sake, you’re not a post-apocalyptic warrior you’re a typist, Clara.” Laura shouted from her position atop of the printer’s out-tray.
“We’ve no argument with you, time traveller.” Said Dean, one of the Adminotaurs. He’d slashed his shirt’s arms into a billowing array of loose strips, because apparently clothing was the first thing to be ruined in the apocalypse and he wanted to fit in. “We’re here for the scabs, not for your techno-sorcery.”
“Stop calling the sales team scabs, it’s disgusting.” Laura replied, unable to process anything else Dean had said.
“Exactly. They’re scabs on a festering wound, and we’re the cure.” Clara clarified, back on her feet with some help from her clan. Now that she could get a clear look, it became clear to Laura that the stock of highlighters had come into play, adding a neon splash to the existing warpaint.
“That doesn’t even make sense. Are you alright?” She asked, determined to keep at least one voice of reason in the room.
“It takes more than that to fell an Adminotaur!”
“What about Leighton? Not going to ask how the actual victim is?” Accused Darryl.
“Of course not! The time witch favours us!” Beryl’s voice crackled from a wireless phone strapped to Dean’s waist.
“Time witch? Where the crap did that come from?” Laura growled.
“It’s obvious that you’re the Wiccan who ensorcelled us through time. I’ve read all about it for the last twelve minutes.” Beryl answered. Laura couldn’t help but appreciate that the microphone on Dean’s wireless phone was incredibly impressive. “It came from the enchanted spreadsheet you sent around.”
The will to argue was lost in the frustration that had solidified inside Laura’s chest. Despite her protestations, the group delusion was only getting worse.
“I’m fine, by the way.” Leighton said, breaking the silence in an unhelpful way.
“Good.”
“I mean, we’re just over here trying to keep the business afloat in an unknown future market, and doing a great job of it. No need to worry about us.”
“Then I won’t.” Laura snapped. “But I also won’t stand for this…” she indicated towards Clara’s wreckage and couldn’t find a word for it “… going on.”
Dean and the other Adminotaurs flinched backwards whilst Clara just narrowed her eyes.
“Won’t you?” She asked softly.
“Don’t goad her.” Dean warned in a panic. “Beryl says she could be capable of anything.”
“No, I won’t stand for it, because it’s assault! Again! You keep doing it and it is literally a crime!”
“Ah, she’s a lawful witch. That bodes well for us.” Leighton declared. He ducked as a staple remover sped through the air towards him.
“That’s not OK either, Clara.” Laura pointed out.
“She might send us back through time.” Harriet shouted over. She was jammed immovably between her chair and her desk on account of the volume of jackets she’d forced onto her torso.
“Please, Clara, don’t goad her. We’d be back in the sadness of the old times.” Dean whispered hoarsely.
Clara kept staring at Laura for a moment, but said nothing.
“Come on, Adminotaurs. Let the witch take her rage out on the scabs instead of us.” She ordered, leading a dash out of the office. The others followed close behind, carrying as much of the chariot as they could salvage and leaving a small pile of shredded tape and castor wheels.
“I wish I could send them all back through friggin’ time.” Laura muttered to herself, walking back to her waiting inventory.
“You know I’ve always respected you, right?” Harriet asked nervously.
“Are you saying that you really believe I’m a time witch?”
Harriet nodded as much as the series of hoods, collars and scarves would allow.
“Then yes. We’ll go with yes.”
“It’s a miracle you’ve never used your magic on Roy, really. If you’re that powerful then you could make him do anything.”
“Except listen to me, apparently.” Laura lamented distractedly. She counted the monitors again. A thought was starting to form.
Laura rushed to Roy’s office and saw with despair, but not exactly surprise, that he’d had his door covered with tin foil. ‘Roy Pearl. Future Boss’ read a marker pen sign across the top.
She knocked, and it sounded far more crinkly than normal.
“We don’t knock in the future.” Roy shouted from inside. “We beep.”
“Can I come in, Roy? It’s Laura. I have important information.”
“You need to beep, Laura.” He repeated.
“But why?”
“There’s one rule for everyone and it has to be obeyed. You beep, or I don’t know you’re there.”
Roy heard a heavy sigh.
“Beep.” Laura said without enthusiasm.
“Enter!”
Laura turned the same squeaky handle that had plagued Roy’s office in the past.
“Ah, Laura. I didn’t recognise your beep, but there are first times for everything. What do you need?” He asked. Laura was taken aback. Not just because he seemed to be making an effort welcome her and ask what she needed, but also because the door was not the only victim of a run-by foiling. Everything in the room, from the chairs to the carpet to the desk ornaments had been thoroughly covered in tin foil. The whole office shone with bright silver from the light that bled in through the window, and it hurt to have her eyes open. But there was another reason for ocular discomfort.
“I see you’re overawed by my futuristic office. Rooms like this are perfectly commonplace in the future. I mean, now. Yes, now.” Roy decided.
“It’s your suit that really took me by surprise.”
Roy looked down at himself. He saw nothing unusual, but supposed that Laura was still having trouble adjusting.
“We both know that everything is shiny and silver in the future, Laura. That includes fine single-breasted suits.”
Apparently, it did indeed include suits where Roy was concerned. His whole suit glittered with thousands of tiny creases from every movement he’d made. He looked a lot like a discarded sandwich.
“I have important news about the future thing.” Laura said, choosing not to engage with Roy’s décor and fashion choices any further than she already had.
“Then you’ve calmed down and accepted that we are, obviously, ten years into the future?” Roy quizzed, making it perfectly clear that only one answer would be acceptable.
“Sure. Why not. But there’s a snag.”
Roy’s expression iced over.
“We’ve been through this, Laura.”
“I know. I agree. There are always paradoxes with time travel though, aren’t there?” She said.
“…go on…” he said reluctantly. This sounded a lot like past-talk to him, but paradoxes were mentioned in all the good time travel sci-fi.
“So I was thinking that when I made the report, I started off in the past.” Laura started slowly. Roy nodded. So far so good. “And when I was done we were obviously in the future, because the date said so. That’s well established at this stage.”
“Well established.” Roy repeated, to feel like he was contributing.
“But that means that my double-checking may have been either side of the travel. I might have only entered the date in the past and checked it in the future. That means the date was never double-checked for the report at the right time.” Laura explained. Roy raised a hand to his chin and scratched it thoughtfully. The foil suit crinkled noisily and shot brief reflections into Laura’s eyes.
“But it means you did still perform a double-check and the date still stands. It doesn’t change the fact that we’re in the future.” Roy reasoned.
“Maybe, but it might also mean that the original date was entered wrong, and that we didn’t get a chance to check it at the time. So we’re at risk of being in the future and the past at the same time, until we check and work it out. ”
“The same time eh? Two markets to exploit then!” Roy decided, dealing a solid blow to Laura’s expectations.
“Er… no… no it’s not a good thing.”
“Why on Earth do you say that?”
“Because…” she said, drawing the word out to buy time. “…because you’ll have to pay two lots of wages!” Roy’s eyes widened immediately. “And two lots of pensions. Everyone has been working for ten years longer already in the future, and they’re working in two years at the same time right now. That’s twice as much progress towards retirement age.”
“This is dire!” Roy said, suddenly panicked with all resistance to Laura’s assertions gone. “How could it possibly have happened?”
“Beryl’s research had brought something up.” Laura said, hating herself for giving any credit to Wiccans being held responsible for anything except increased candle and feather sales. “She has concluded that a time-witch must have cast a spell to send us forwards. But I think that breaking the paradox could send us back to a time of single wage packets and an eternity until retirement.”
“Do it.” Roy said immediately. “There’s no way I’m giving these maggots a penny more than they’ve earned.”
Laura waited for him to say ‘present company excluded’, but it eventually became clear that it wasn’t going to happen.
“Right. Well, first I need you to close the metric sheet. Then I’ll go back to my desk, because the spell must have been cast there, obviously, and I’ll change the sheet.”
“Yes, obviously it must have been.” Roy agreed. If it was obvious then he couldn’t well argue over it, he reasoned. “OK. I’ll close it. Erm, do you think it’s OK for future computer screens not to have foil over them if I want to look at what’s on it?” He asked with almost child-like sincerity.
“Yes, Roy. That should be fine.” Laura said, spinning on her heel and fleeing before Roy changed his mind.
Back at her desk, Laura didn’t even bother to sit down. She opened the metrics sheet and corrected her typo, this time remembering to double-check that she hadn’t sent them backwards by a few days too many, and closed it straight away. Roy appeared over her shoulder, like a man-lighthouse reflecting all of the ceiling lights, barely a few seconds later.
“I thought it best to see this for myself.” He said gravely.
“Oh. Yes, definitely. Let’s open it now and check, shall we? Remember, this will definitely break the spell and send us back to our own time if it says the date we expect.”
“Yes of course! I’m not an idiot!” Roy claimed with ill-placed confidence. Laura heard a deeply muffled laugh from Harriet, but thankfully Roy missed it.
“Here goes…” she said, clicking the icon. There was a tense loading time, during which Laura noticed the smell of several space heaters coming from Harriet’s direction.
“My goodness!” Roy exclaimed as the sheet popped up. “It worked! We’re back in our own time! Good work Laura.”
“Just doing my job.” She said modestly. Idiot-wrangling had never been explicitly in her job description.
“You did it bloody well. It means I can take off this damned foil suit for a start!” He said, tearing thin aluminium away with both hands.
“I think we’re all grateful for that.” Laura agreed. She couldn’t hear any response from Roy, however, because a battle-wail echoed through the office. All heads turned to see the familiar form of the Adminotaurs’ chariot, but this time it was being drawn by…
“Oh gods…” Laura said.
“Is that… Darryl?” Roy asked incredulously.
“Yes sir. And Leighton.”
“The scabs will always bow to us!” Clara shrieked triumphantly, standing on her chariot and lashing the two sales reps with her shattered mouse flail. They’d been harnessed to it using an unsanitary quantity of sticky tape, and marched as a pair between the desks.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at!”
“The future is ours! It belongs to the Adminotaurs!” Clara announced.
“This isn’t the future, it’s the present! We broke the time-witch’s spell.” Roy said, as if it should have been patently obvious to any casual observer. Silence descended onto the office as an existential uplift hit everyone for the second time that day. “This kind of behaviour is not what I expect of professionals.”
Behind all the war-paint, Laura thought she could see Clara blush. She couldn’t even begin to express her satisfaction that the administrative support team’s violent tendencies were getting addressed.
“You’re supposed to be securing sales, not pulling chairs around. Get back to it and stop distracting the Adminotaurs from their work. Good name for a team that, Clara. Well chosen.”
Laura sat down hard in her seat. Of all the things they could have brought back from the future, the Adminotaurs were not what she would have chosen. They seemed pleased with themselves however, and Clara gave the sales reps an additional admonishing lash. Roy nodded approvingly.
“Back to business as normal then?” Laura asked.
“Of course! We have bulb parts to sell.” Roy confirmed. He paused for a moment. “But you should still complete that inventory for me. Best be prepared in case of another time-witch incident.”
“Yes Roy.” Laura said with a sigh.
Yet again, she counted the monitors.