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There is a typewriter in front of me. So I type:

Roy started working at the Planetary Department of Finance
(PDF) on Janus 22, 2305 CE.  They stuffed him in an empty 
office with a stack of books in the centre.  Nobody told 
him what his job was, how much he was getting paid, where 
to park his space-car, where the space-washrooms were, 
or anything like that.  All he knew was that there was a 
stack of space-books before him.  He began to thumb 
through the space-pages.  (NOTE -- Space-noun theme 
doesn't seem to be working.  Edit this paragraph later.)

There is a typewriter in front of me. I am in an office on the top floor. I don't have anything important to do this afternoon. There is a stack of paper on my desk and a fresh black ribbon in the typewriter. So I type:

After three hours, Roy needed to use the washroom. 
He walked past other offices and tried to ask employees 
for directions, but nobody would turn their eyes from 
their desk or acknowledge his presence in any other way.  

There is a typewriter in front of me. Who am I? A person in an office. My office is on the top floor, or should be, if the building were inverted. I am actually twenty stories underground. I sit motionless at my desk. I don't have anything important to do this afternoon and I can't remember an afternoon when I did. I can't remember what an afternoon is, really. There is a stack of paper on my desk. There is a ribbon in the typewriter. My heart is a pool of eels. The air around me is turning to water. The clacking of keys will fill this silence. So I type:

Eventually, he found a dark oily room. He relieved himself 
down a small hole in the floor, and snuck back to the 
room that contained nothing but books.  Most were 
technical manuals, no two on the same subject.  
There were manuals on insulin research, ferris wheel 
construction, dot matrix printer repair, etc.
  Later, he went home for the evening.

I think this story is really going somewhere. I show it to my best friend, the quiet guy in the corner. He scans the story line by line, page by page. He spits it back at me. Now he has replicated my story, letter-for-letter. He is either flattering or mocking me, I can't tell which. My best friend is a photocopier. My other friends are also machines. As far as I can recall, I've never encountered anything else.

In his living quarters, Roy consumed energy and rested his body.

The next day all of the books in his office had been replaced with new ones.

Smiling in fear, he wondered if they were replaced right after he went home, or just before he came back.

I'd like to show this story to my boss. I gather the typewritten pages and rise from my desk. I realize I've never seen him and don't know how to find him, so I sit back down. Maybe I could fax him? I do have a fax machine, but I only use it as a friend. "Would you like something to eat?" I ask it as I pull a celery from beneath my desk. No response. The celery is warm and limp. It's difficult to eat it this way. I think it gives me energy. Maybe it doesn't.

Roy's atrophied spirit began to collapse upon itself.  
He could rarely stir up enough courage to leave 
the room, and on those rare occasions he would move 
in stealth.

I open and close my mouth, making some sounds. There is a telephone at my desk. I believe that pressing 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 might do something. I put the receiver against my face and hear a noise coming from it.

"Operator, how may I direct your call?"
"Wow, what does that mean?"
"Sir, can I help you?"
"Maybe. I mean, I hope you can."
"What can I do for you, sir?"
"Well, I'd like to talk to someone."
"Who would you like to talk to?"
"Someone. A real person. I want to have a real friend."
"Wouldn't we all, sir, wouldn't we all."
"Well, are you a real person?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm under strict company orders not to disclose that information."
"What company do you work for?"
"I'm under strict orders not to disclose that information either."

As Roy was reading about advanced ergonomics, 
the building's power shut off.  The room went 
dark and his book dissolved in his hand.  Roy 
ran out into the empty hallway.  There was nobody 
in the office beside his, or the next.  Roy went 
through the entire floor.  As he reached the 
reception area, the lights came back on.  
A secretary materialized behind the desk. 

I dream my office has a window. A blackbird flies across and lands on the ledge. She looks into my eyes and sings. I stop typing. My ears are flooded with melodious trills and crochets. With each phrase of her song she draws me nearer. I am on my knees, up against the glass, wanting to touch her. Crescendos and glissandos are pouring out of her mouth. I fall. I quiver. I chirp. Soon I too am a bird. Our melodies intertwine. Our rhythms syncopate.

I look up and see that she is gone. Silence. There is no window.

"This is not a real person.  It is a hologram."  
Roy's hand passed through the secretary.  

I'm tired. Either I've just woken up or I'm about to fall asleep. I ask the fax machine and the photocopier, "Is it a good idea for Roy to realize that he's in a world of holograms and that he is in fact a robot?" The photocopier responds glibly. The fax machine interjects. Then the photocopier again, then the fax. They are sending messages to one another, each a copy of the last, each progressively distorted. As the pages grow blank, the fax and photocopier keep talking. All they do is agree with each other. I am disappearing.

Scribo ergo sum. Scribo ergo sum. Scribo ergo sum.

The photocopier is real. The fax machine is real. The robot converses to them. They do not acknowledge him. Therefore, the robot is not real.

I'm hesitant to try this again. I pick up the receiver and hit numbers at random. It rings.

"Hello?"

It is a cheerful voice. My throat grows dry.

"Hello?" she says.

I can't remember how to hang up.

"You know, that's a pretty strange way to use a telephone, dialing someone's number and then not talking to them."
"Hi. Hi. I'm sorry. I'm not used to talking."
"Oh! Hello! Hello, strange man! So there is someone there after all. Do you know what the first thing anyone ever said on the telephone was?"
I think for a moment. "Was it 'Hello?'"
"No, it was 'Watson, come here. I need you.' That was Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, speaking to his assistant. Do you know why he said it?"
"No, I don't."
"Oh, come on."
"I really don't."
"Take a guess."
"Well…do you think…do you think maybe he was lonely?"
"That sounds likely. I'll bet that while he was inventing he got lonely, so he asked Watson to come and spend some time with him."
"Do you think Watson came?"
"I'm nearly certain he did."

We talk about palindromes, the first dog in outer space, and the Canadian labour movement from 1902-1960. Her human voice speaks directly to me. She's talking about elevators now. Apparently, inside of each elevator is a console with a set of buttons on it. Once you step inside and turn around, the console will either be on your left or your right. She says she has an unerring tendency to turn the wrong way, so elevators should have a console on both sides so you can turn in either direction, or at least a mirror at the back so you can know for sure what side it's on.

"I don't like elevators either," I say. "And I'm twenty floors underground!"
"Oh no! Do you turn around too fast and strain your neck? That always happens to me!"
"No. I mean, I don't think I've ever taken an elevator before."
"Well how do you leave?"
"Leave where?"
"The place where you are."
"I'm always in the same place as where I am."
"Do you ever leave?"
I feel no need to answer this. A few moments pass in silence.
She says "Hi."
"Hello," I reply, but she's already hung up.
I don't remember what numbers I pressed to talk to her.

The job of the robot is in danger due to new 
holographic workers.  The robot lives in a robot 
house with his robot girl.  He pushes numbers on 
his telephone and she speaks to him.  She is 
nicer than the printer and the fax machine, and 
when he speaks to her she listens and responds 
to his voice.

Something enters my office. I duck down behind my desk and try to determine what it is. 65% oxygen, 18.8% carbon, 9.5% hydrogen, 3.3% nitrogen, 1.5% calcium, 1% phosphorus, plus potassium, sulphur, chlorine, sodium, magnesium, and traces of iron, fluoride, iodine, and zinc. She has blue eyes.

"You can actually analyze my atomic makeup?" The human has the same voice as the one on the telephone.
"Can't everyone?"
Apparently, different people can analyze different things. For me, it's atomic makeup. For her, it's personalities.
She asks, "Do you know what your personality is?"
"Sure, of course I do."
"Okay then, tell me what it is."
"What? No, you just said you know them. If that's true, why do you need me to say it?"
"Just because I know doesn't mean I tell. It's better for people to discover it for themselves. You don't know yours."
"Oh no, oh no. I know."
"Okay then. Prove it."
". . ."
"See? And you're telling me you know it. You poor thing, you don't even know your own name."
"Yes I do."
"What is it?"
"My name? I have one…I just can't describe it."
"See? I can describe my name. It's Clarisse. You don't know your name."
"How do I find out?"
"Do you have any identification? Health card?"
"No."
"Birth certificate?"
"No."
"Driver's license? Never mind. I don't suppose you have a pay stub."
"I don't even know what a pay stub is."
"You'll have to talk to your boss about that, get it figured out. Where's his office? Do you know?"
"Let's deal with that later."
"No, let's deal with that now."

Clarisse reaches toward me and I take her hand. It is warm and soft. It is somewhat similar to my own body, but it exists outside of me and moves autonomously. Her fingertips touch my palm as she leads me through my office door and out onto the twentieth floor. The fax machine, the photocopier, and the telephone become further away. I wave goodbye to them.

It is the unofficial year of the robot.  Unofficial 
robots ride in unofficial floats down unofficial 
metal streets.  Mayorbot gives a speech, off the 
record, under his breath, in the shower.

"See? There you go! Just like a little Jacques Cartier!"

I look at Clarisse. I look out at the twentieth floor. The ceiling is pale and fluorescent. The floors are waxy green marble. The hallway is polite, but there are corridors we might get lost in. We turn left. I'm worried we won't be able to find my office again. We turn right. I recall Clarisse's unerring tendency to turn the wrong way and it makes me nervous. Maybe we should be unwinding a string or leaving a trail of crumbs. We turn right. As we wander, I ask questions.

"Before you hung up the phone you said Hi to me. Why did you do that?"

"Oh, that? I figure, why save Hi for the beginning of the next conversation? Hawaiians say Aloha at both the beginning and the end of a conversation. So why not say Hi at the end? It's stupid not to, really."

"After you hung up, how did you find me?"
"Oh, I'm resourceful. It's a little thing called wanting to get something done and doing it."

Clarisse wants to talk to my boss. I wonder who he is and if he cares about me. I wonder if I will know him when I see him.

And as they wandered through the tin forest, 
Robot Boy and the Robot Girl came upon a house 
built of bread and roofed with cakes, and 
windows of transparent sugar.
	Robot Girl said, "We will have some of thi
  s and make a fine meal.  It will taste so, so sweet."
	Just then the silvery sky was swept with cloud
  s and the Minotaur emerged and ate them alive the end.

We discover a set of large metal doors. Beside them, there is a button with an arrow on it, pointing up.

I ask, "Is this where the boss lives?"
"Nope. This is an elevator."
"We don't have to go in it, do we?"
"No no no. We still have more rooms to see on this floor." She starts walking and I follow.
"Clarisse? You said you can analyze personalities, right?"
"Yep."
"What's yours?"
"Oh mine? 25% grass and leaves and trees, 22% lioness, 17% perpetual motion, 11% angelhair pasta, 9% a bulb's light and 7.5% flakes of snow, plus lesser parts vernal equinox, Gautama Buddha, Nellie McClung, and EP singles. Trace amounts of uranium, the colour orange, the Velvet Underground, and the Adelie Penguin's mating stone."
"Clarisse?"
"Yes?"
"I like your clothes."
She makes a sound like a blackbird makes, something musical.
"Oh, that's laughter," she says. Her similarity to the blackbird concerns me a great deal.

Laughter equals chirp.  Therefore, girl equals bird.

As we progress beyond the elevator, the floor begins to lose its waxy polish. The air is starting to feel stagnant. We turn left again, left again, right. I can't remember these directions anymore. We reach a brown door with a silvery knob. Inside, there are porcelain basins fitted with chrome handles and levers. There is also a broken mirror, shattered vestiges of glass left in a frame. Shards cover the floor. "The boss may have been here." Clarisse checks the garbage can for clues.

I look at my reflection in the slivers.
"Clarisse?"
"Yeah?"
"What's my personality?"
"Are you sure you want to know?"
"Yes, Clarisse. Tell me."
"31% closed doors, 16% brown jacket, 12.5% the letter 'W,' 9% correction fluid, 7% melting ice, and 5.5% Rene Descartes, plus lesser parts of hardcover textbooks, windy streets, and Kilgore Trout. Plus, trace amounts of a full moon, the chirping of a bird, kaleidoscopes, rainbows, and a shadowplay. What do you think?"
"I think I get it."
"That's good. Sometimes they're hard to get."
"Clarisse?"
"Yep?"
"Do you think maybe the letter W is my name?"
"Do you think it's your name?"
"Maybe."
"Then maybe it is."
"Clarisse?"
"Yeah?"
"Is my name pronounced 'double-you' or 'Wwwwwwwww'?"

She chirps.

Crossing the finish line, Marathonbot is hailed 
by the media and by millions of fanbots who 
have come from all over the world.  Mercury 
asks him, "So how does it feel?"
	"Victory is hard-coded into me.  In infinit
  e marathons I would be infinite times victorious.  
  Every victory yields the same emotion, as 
  predetermined by my creator.  I cannot defy 
  my programming.
	"Also, I would describe the emotion as 
  a particularly positive one."

As we continue through the maze of halls, we come across an open area. There is a desk with paper, pens, sticky notes, and a lamp, all shrouded in a dusty grey substance. The floor is carpeted, and the chair is ergonomically efficient.

"I used to work in one of these, as a receptionist," Clarisse states.
I wonder what else she's done.
"Well I've been an actress, a teacher, an astronomer, a poet, a tree planter, a web designer, a farmer, a checkout girl, a painter, a waitress, a fashion designer, an economist, a gardener, and a biologist. Before that, I was a baby, and before that a sperm and ovum, and then I was an angel, and before that I was an Amazon princess and Hippolyta was my lover and we braided each other's hair and before that I was a lioness and before that I was a tree!"
"And what are you now?"
"A girl who's helping you find your boss. What are you, W?"
"A rainbow. A shadowplay-writing rainbow."

The robots hold a high school dance.  State-sanctioned 
dance events help to reduce incidences of unmonitored 
youth activity. 

Therefore, there is a dance.

At the dance, girlbots and boybots are expressly 
forbidden to intermingle.  Their magnetic chips are 
polarized to ensure that no boybot and girlbot can 
get within a three-foot radius of each other. 

Green dress bot walks into the gymnasium.  I fall in 
love with her.  She falls in love with me.  We dance 
exactly thirty-six inches apart, gazing at each other 
across the divide. 

When the boybots begin to stick to one another 
(girlbots likewise), the magnetic chips must be 
recalibrated.  We are demagnetized by remote.  
The field is neutralized.  During this brief moment, 
boy and girl move together, our bodies gently touching.

The halls turn twisty, serpentine. The walls begin to resemble sandstone. Clarisse slides back a heavy slab to expose a new room: dusty, silent, ruinous. It is singularly ill-lit, and I can only see the outlines of a large oval table surrounded by chairs.

"I can't see anything," I say.

Clarisse lights a match. There is a white sheet hanging from the wall: a projection screen, as Clarisse describes it. The match illuminates nothing else in particular.

"This is called a board room," says Clarisse. "This is where they used to make their plans." Her match burns out. She heads back to the maze and I follow her.

"Was the boss here?" I ask.
"Many times, I assume. But not recently at all."
"Clarisse?"
"Yeah?"
"Were you really a scientist?"
"Of course I was. You know, I bet you'd really enjoy science."
"Really?"

"Oh yes. Science is the language of love. Take the telophase of mitosis, for example, when cells divide. After the microtubules withdraw, when each daughter's swelling chromatin is wrapped in a thin nuclear envelope, that's when it happens. The cytoplasm spreads open sweetly. The cell membrane advances, presses in tight. Oh, W, it presses so tight. One body becomes two, each pressed up real close against the other."

I melt back into the table, leaning on my elbows. She drifts into me. Her top lip is fair and freckled. Her bottom lip is the softest thing I have ever touched. Our mouths open and close. Her breath is a tender leaf I have never tasted.

I take a moment to recover. In my mind, I tell my friends. See what I just did? I just kissed Clarisse! Twice, three times! The fax machine tells me I can't count the same kiss more than once. Even though I experienced the moment in three temporal states (being about to kiss, kissing, having kissed), I can only count it once. Thermodynamically speaking, no two kisses can occupy the same space at the same time.

So I kiss Clarisse again. That'll show the fax machine. But as my mouth touches hers, nothing else matters. Her lips are everything. Her breath is everything.

And he did ascend to the robot plateau, where 
before his eyes appeared a burning bush.  
And though the bush did live within the flame, 
it was not consumed by fire.


	"Another hologram," thought he.
	"Wrong!" spake Godbot.
	The robot trembled and hid his face.
	"Oh, by the way," Godbot did add, "here ear
  some rules you ought probably start following.  
  One: thou shalt have no other Bots, etc."

The filthy corridor starts to slope downward, subtly at first, and then sharply. There are echoes, buzzes, creaks. The air is nearly too thin to breathe. The hall runs down into a thick darkness. I am afraid to continue. There could be anything down there.

"Clarisse, don't make me."

She walks into the black void and flicks a switch. A lightbulb turns on, exposing a small door at the hallway's end. She opens it and I run to her, following her through it.

Inside, everything is fresh. The air is the purest I have ever breathed. There are stacks of paper, stacks of boxes, stacks of equipment, stacks of everything! Clarisse begins searching through boxes. "These are all empty," she curses.

I sit on a stack of cardboard sheets, watching her movements. She locates a small metal case, sealed with a lock.

"W!"

She shakes it and hears something moving within. She tries to pull it open with her hands. Failing this, she shakes the box again.

"Clarisse," I say. "I think I understand what you mean about the language of love."

"Huh?"
"Come near me."

"The universe expands and contracts. Your lungs expand and contract. Therefore, your breath is the essence of the universe."
"Oh W."

Imagine the caress of metal on metal.  Imagine their embrace.

"Clarisse, I like these stacks of things."
"Me too."
"Clarisse, I would like to stack you on top of me."
"I would like that too."
And so we create each other.

For eons the yangbot has searched for enlightenment.
And there she stands: yinbot on the moon.  Why did 
he never look to that orb, that eternal white circle?
Has she been there forever?  He flies to her on jetboots,
kisses her ears, she kisses his eyes, their chi the 
fuel of perpetual motion.

We are in the supply room, we are among the stacks, we are on the twentieth floor, we are in a meadow under a summer sky.

Robot tree planters plant robot trees.  Treebots grow.
Sunbot shines.  Breezebot blows.  Earthbot turns.  
Dancebots sway.  Touchbots touch.  Kissbots kiss.  
Lovebots love.  Everything is as it should be under 
Godbot's blue heaven.

She winds around me. I wear her like an avatar. My spirit inhabits her body. Inside her I am becoming.

The skyrocket soars.  "We've reached infinity, captain."
The engineer presses the "mission complete" button, 
deploying 200 million robots into the centre of the 
universe.  Captain and crew power down, switch to 
autopilot, and rest, and sleep, and sleep.

Hours later, I wake up. I wake up in my office. I look beside me. I look around me. Clarisse is gone. I search my office. I search the halls. I search every room on this floor. There is nothing. There is no evidence that she ever existed. I conduct a series of experiments to discover her. The results are not particularly promising.

Experiment 1: A blackbird lands at my imaginary 
window.  She is a pleasure, ocular and auditory.
She teaches me a melody, allows me to find counterpoint.
When I turn my head, she is gone.  Therefore, the 
blackbird outside my window does not exist. 

Experiment 2: You walk into my office. I really like you.
Therefore, you do not exist. 

Experiment 3: You do not exist. I believe that you exist.
I do not exist.

I sleep again. I wake. I sleep again. I wake. I eat bread. As I am chewing crust it occurs to me that, for a rainbow, I've never performed a shadowplay. I cast a white curtain over the door, give directions to the cast and crew.

The fax machine and photocopier provide light for a thunderstorm. A wanderer, played by me, journeys through the forest, protecting himself from the rain. I am shaking uncooked rice in an aluminum tray for the sound.

The telephone provides the sound of a blackbird, illuminated by the lights of heaven. Calmed by gentle chirping, the rain subsides.

The wanderer bows down in worship of the glorious miracle.

The blackbird soars from its perch and scratches out the wanderer's eyes. The white curtain is sprayed with red ink.

I flail my arms, scream my throat raw, rip out handfuls of hair, tear down the curtain.

Clarisse is gone, and she has left nothing for me.  
	And she is everywhere.  
	Before Clarisse, humans built no house of brick
  to repel the sun, but dwelt ant-like in ditches.  Clarisse taught 
	humans mathematics, wisdom's lore, and written language.  
	Who, before Clarisse, made canvas wings for sea-battered 
	ships?  What human, fallen ill, did not simply shrivel up 
	and die for lack of treatment?  Who dared claim the material 
	hidden deep in the earth: copper, iron, silver, even gold?  
	No one!  So, to put it in a word, every human art, every 
	science, every belief and every thought came from Clarisse.
	The best parts of my collection are what she's left behind.

"Nice show, silly."
"Clarisse?"
"So, I went and got a crowbar. Should we open the box?"

boop boop beep?

I'd forgotten about the box. Clarisse pries the lid and splits it in two. A sheet of paper drifts to the ground.

"Does this look familiar?" she asks, handing it over.
I read it. I read it more than once.
"Let's leave this place."

I walk resolutely down the sterile hall, step through the elevator doors, and turn toward the console.

"Each of these buttons can take us to a different place."

The doors close.

I am taking nothing with me. I have left one thing behind. There it is, on my desk.

From: W
To: The Boss
Cc: Photocopier, Fax Machine, Telephone
Re: Final Report and Resignation

Dear _______,
  The boss is not in the office today.  
  He is on a golf trip.  He is home sick.  
  He is at a Perpetual General Meeting (PGM).  
  His daughter is in charge while he is away.  
  She is paid to cry about everyone's problems.  
  Everyone in the world.
  The boss declares that four score ago all robots 
  were created equal.
  The boss sends secret messages to the neon man from mars.
  The boss is the curtain upon which we project shadows.
  The boss is on fire, his body the fuel for the 
  continuing history of our world.  Watch the flames radiate!
  The boss is dead.  The boss remains dead.  
  What is this building, if not his tomb and monument?