Intrigue

The monotonous sound of the train’s wheels churning threatened to put Sam to sleep as he stared out his seat’s window. The low rumble as it glided along the tracks perfectly complimented the ever-changing scenery as the rail cars sped past. Of course, most would not look so pleasantly upon the scene the train drove past as Sam did. Stretching out for miles was a scrapyard filled with a whole city’s waste. Beyond it—almost rising up from it, in fact—was the city that created it. It was not, as most assumed, a junkyard filled with the bodily and food waste of the city, but the decaying remnants of cars, household items, even buildings long since forgotten. It was where all the non-organic old things came to die, and running straight through it was the living, breathing, new train that led to the even more vibrant and alive city Sam called…well, he wasn’t sure what he called it.

Home might be the first word that would come to mind for most, but his usual train ride to the city from outside it cemented such a sentimental take void. It was not the warm, loving home he could return to whenever he felt tired and weary from work. It was the unmoving, perfect center which required admittance for entry. It held his livelihood within, sure, but it was not Sam’s home. It represented his job, his earnings, and that from which he desired escape. The scrapyard, therefore, was the vast sea which separated what was free and what was controlled. It was the vast untamed ocean separating Sam’s work life from his home life. Within it was vast mysteries undiscovered—one of which, Sam noticed, he may have accidentally missed.

Sam darted up out of his sleepy daze before realizing what he was doing. Sheepishly, he looked around the passenger cabin at the various exasperated expressions directed at his expense. Sitting back down, Sam leaned ever closer to his seat’s window, staring out intently into the vast sea of decay. There out in the rust, Sam saw that which he was fearful of missing. Between two mounds of scrap in the far distance sat a small, flat area. In the center of this area was a smaller golden speck. Sam was never sure quite what it was—whether it was the sun’s reflection off of a shining piece of metal or a brightly-painted taxi that somehow survived out in the elements—but it served as an odd comfort to Sam on his journey to work. For every trip to the city Sam had taken since he was a teenager, the gold speck was there. It was his tradition to gaze out into the scrapyard and search for the speck. Whether it was a game or a habit, Sam always found it. He never questioned what it was or why it was there, he just accepted it as it existed: A landmark for him alone to always recognize and acknowledge.

After the brief few seconds of the gold speck’s visibility passed, Sam sighed and sat back down in his chair. He looked once more to the quickly rising sun, now ready to face the day.

* * *

“So, what project has the Big Man got you working on now.”

The voice of Sam’s coworker, Paul, caused him to wake up from his daydream. He was imagining the same thing he had been for a week now: Going into the scrapyard and finding out just what, exactly, that gold speck was. Every time he came upon the two large mounds of scrap and the area in between, though, he could never put an image to what the gold speck truly held within its mystery. Before he could go back into his daze; however, he quickly shook his head and addressed Paul.

“Nothing much,” Sam said, turning his head and facing Paul, who stood just outside his cubicle, “Just another audit.”

“Just another—my God,” Paul laughed, placing his hand on top of the cubicle’s panel, “No wonder you’re Boyd’s favorite! Just another audit,” he moved back from Sam’s cubicle and, just when Sam thought he was free of his distraction, Paul said, “Steve, Charlie, get over here!”

“Paul, wait,” Sam said, trying in vain to stop Paul as he heard the two other coworkers in the distant.

“He said what?”

“No way.”

“No lie,” Paul said, walking back with Steve and Charlie in tow, “Tell the men, Sam.”

“Boyd assigned me to help with an audit on a local retail chain,” Sam said, now turned completely in his office chair to address the gathered group, “It’s really not that big a deal—”

“Who’s the client really,” Steve asked, crossing his arm with an eyebrow raised.

Sam stammered before turning back to his computer and quietly mumbling, “Trade Cache.”

“Local retail store. If by local you mean a whole half of the country,” Charlie said, looking to Paul, “You weren’t kidding, he really is quite the humble specimen! Next thing you know, he’ll be our new boss and say he just got a ‘slight pay raise.’”

“I’d heard they were going to give that job to another branch,” Paul said, his eyes wide and mouth agape, “I didn’t think they were keeping it in-house, yet here you are, doing it all on your lonesome.”

“Well, not alone, no,” Sam said, pulling up his recent emails and gesturing to his most recent few, “Boyd did send it out of our branch, but he said he still wanted someone from our side to keep their hand in the audit in case anything got interesting.”

“So, you’re Boyd’s chosen heir,” Paul said plainly, his expression blank, “My God, this is all better than I thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Charlie piped up before Paul could answer, “He probably means that this is sort of like how Boyd was chosen as the head of our department. The boss before him saw his potential and gave him a leading task with another branch. He surpassed the previous boss’s expectations and ended up being hired as his replacement after the old guy retired.”

“Story goes that he gave the task not long before he left,” Steve said, nodding along, “You don’t think Boyd is moving on to greener pastures, do you?”

“I’m not sure,” Paul said, almost staring a hole through Sam’s head, who sat lower and lower in his chair under Paul’s gaze, “Well, we should leave Sam to his work. Sam, this has been ever so enlightening and enjoyable. Good luck with ‘just another audit.’”

Sam watched his coworkers scatter to their various cubicles before turning back to his computer. Gradually, he started back to work but slowly started zoning out again. Further and further his surroundings disappeared until he began daydreaming about the golden spot once more. He imagined his journey across the sea of scrap, following underneath the train tracks as he gradually found the two mounds he sought. He saw himself passing by old rusted cars, broken down fridges, crushed cans, and falling old buildings built before the scrapyard’s existence. He saw the skeletal remains of scaffolding and the various littering of used needles and surgical elastic bands from their prior, temporary inhabitants. Finally, he scaled the highest of the two mounds and looked down upon…nothing. No gold speck, no large flat area. It was empty. A void, black existence wherein the idea of the gold speck lay. Sam, however, did not truly know the gold speck. He had no knowledge of what it looked like—of what it was. So, within his mind, Sam placated this lack of knowledge with a vast, empty void where something should be, but wasn’t. Sam, in his imagination, sat down upon the peak of his crumbling scrap mound and watched as a train passed by. Sam looked up and, noticing himself the same exact place he had sat that morning, watched himself jerk awake and stare down at the speck.

“What must I see there that I cannot see here,” Sam said to himself in thought. Once the train fully left, so too did Sam leave his daydream—returning once more to the city.

Sam sat back in his chair and stretched. Standing, he looked out an office window onto the city. Even as the sun gradually fell lower and lower in the sky, the city appeared as vibrant and lively as ever. To Sam, however, it felt artificial in its life. The city breathed, but it felt more like a breath taken from a respirator than true lungs. As he stared on gloomily, he felt a pat on his shoulder.

“Hey,” Paul said, his jacket slung over his shoulder and mouth slightly skewed into a smile, “The guys and I were going out to the bar, you should come. It’ll be nice to socialize—we rarely see you outside of work, to begin with.”

Sam felt unsure of how to respond, looking between Paul and the two others, whom he noticed were standing by the office door waiting.

“Sure,” Sam said with an odd confident-yet-uneasy tone to his voice, “That sounds…nice. Thank you.”

Paul’s face lit up slightly and led Sam to the elevator with his hand still on his shoulder, “I was hoping you’d say that. Charlie, Steve, I got our plus one!”

“Sounds good.”

“Who’s buying?”

“You are,” Paul said to Charlie, whose face turned red, “You booze-leach. I practically had to give up an arm and a leg to pay off my rent after the last time I paid for your tab.”

“That’s not fair,” Charlie said as he stepped into the elevator which arrived as Sam and Paul walked towards him and Steve, “Hey, I know! Mr. Audit should be good for it, no?”

Sam’s eyes widened slightly as he tried to respond, but was quickly cut off by Paul.

“He is our honored guest in tonight’s escapade,” he said, placing both hands on Sam’s shoulders in joking defense, “This is a rare treat to see so-called ‘Mr. Audit’ outside of his natural habitat. The last thing any of us want is to scare him off with one of your nefarious wage-wasting bar tabs—”

“Hey—”

“I’m not finished,” Paul said, moving to Charlie. He placed his hand on his arm and leaned behind him, whispering something into his ear. Charlie’s expression changed, becoming flat and semi-lifeless like he was in deep thought. As quickly as it changed, his expression returned to a friendlier disposition.

“Fine, fine,” he said, putting his arms in the air in surrender, “You’ve got me, I’ll pay… but Steve gets next time.”

“Okay now,” Steve said, shock on his face, “When did I get put in this deal here?”

Paul and Charlie laughed, both patting Steve on the back in feigned consolidation. Sam watched the three, standing back and chuckling slightly with the group. Eventually, the elevator reached the ground floor, and the group walked on into the night.