Unit

Written for my son's challenge, topic: Five really geeky young guys and a gorgeous, dressed-up girl walked in the door together.


Five really geeky young guys and a gorgeous, dressed-up girl walked in the door together. My initial thought was that they were following her, not quite drooling, imaginations ravishing her, but then I saw she was leading them. She knew they were there. They belonged there. Invisible attachments dragged them along with her. If she had suddenly started running, they would have been jerked forward to keep pace.

She walked up to the front desk and started talking to the attendant. The five boys milled around, looking the place over, touching and investigating every part of the area. The boy wearing thick-lensed glasses practically had his nose down to the desk and then the carpet. He peered at the papers she was holding and at the computer on the attendant’s desk. Another was running his hands over the desk, touching the side of the computer. The one with curly, blondish hair stood right next to her, constantly whispering in her ear. The one with the very dark hair had his nose down to the desk, too, looking very much like he was smelling it. The fifth one was nonchalantly leaning on the desk, chewing on a pen he had picked up.

The attendant was speaking into his headphone, and then he smiled at her. I couldn’t hear what he said, but it was probably something like “He’ll be down shortly. You may have a seat over there.” He pointed at the designer group of love seat and two chairs. She moved in that direction, the boys swirling around her chaotically. She sat down, but they continued their intense investigation of their surroundings.

I was standing on the patio just outside the opposite door, taking a smoke break. I was staring, but they were such an unusual group of people, I was fascinated. She was so composed, the essence of the young urban professional, whereas her young companions seemed to have thrown on the first clothes they had come across that morning, giving no thought to their appearance. I wondered why on earth she had brought them along for a business meeting. They must have some great value to her, but I had no idea what that could be.

Just as I finished my cigarette, the elevator door opened, and a man walked across to meet her. They shook hands, nodding and chatting. He ignored the young men, who were still milling around the area. As I opened the patio doors into the lobby, she joined the man from upstairs, and the whole strange group moved toward the elevators. The blonde guy was still trying to whisper in her ear, but she and the man she had come to see ignored him.

As I approached the bank of elevators from one end, one of them apparently opened, because the small group of waiting people began to disappear from my view, stepping through an elevator door. She and the man from upstairs reached the elevator and walked on in. I quickened my step in order to reach the elevator door before it closed. The five young men entered in their own strange ways, some seeming to stumble forward, others almost running. The last one, still chewing on the pen he had picked up from the receptionist’s desk, actually jumped in, as if he thought a more normal entry might cause him to be left behind.

I reached the opening and stuck my hand in ahead of me to keep the doors from closing. There wouldn’t be a lot of room with all those people, but I thought I could squeeze in. I stepped across the metal threshold and the door closed. I was surprised to see there was plenty of room. Maybe there hadn’t been as many people waiting as I thought. Then I realized the five companions were not there. I looked around quickly, half expecting from their previous behavior to see them hanging from the ceiling or crawling around on the floor. They were nowhere to be found.

I looked immediately at the young woman. The expression on my face must have been peculiar, because I wanted very badly to say, “Where did they go?” but I was suddenly sure that everyone else in the elevator would think I was nuts. I realized that during the entire time the group had been in the building, nobody had acknowledged the presence of the five boys. The receptionist, the man from upstairs, even the woman herself had not once looked at them or spoken to them, in spite of their very noticeable behavior.

She smiled at me and calmly winked. Just then the elevator door opened and she and the man she had come to meet stepped out. It wasn’t my floor, but it only took me a moment to realize that I couldn’t live with the idea of going on back to my desk and not knowing any more about her and those five young guys.

I stepped out of the elevator, and as I did, I felt a slight breeze, as if someone was passing me. I glanced to my left, but saw no one. I turned back to see where the girl was going, and then I saw them. All five of them were again following after her, just as they had done before, ranging out to one side or ahead to investigate a chair or a painting on the wall, then returning to her side. The group stopped about ten feet ahead of me, in front of an older woman’s desk. The man was talking to her; perhaps she was his secretary and he was giving instructions not to be interrupted during his meeting with the girl.

My astonishment was great enough to stop me in my tracks. I muttered under my breath, “Who are they?” The girl looked back at me. The curly haired, blond one was whispering in her ear, but then he stopped and looked at me, too. The other boys stopped their investigations of the older woman’s desk and all five of them moved in my direction.

The next thing I knew, the boy with the thick glasses was peering at my clothes and my hair, the feely-touchy one was running his hands over my shirt, the pen chewer had taken my pen out of my shirt pocket and started chewing on it, and the one with black hair was smelling me. I could hear him sniffing!

The curly haired, blond one whispered in my ear. “Most people don’t see us. We are her sensors. She is cybernetic. You see us because you are too much with computers. You need more people input.”

The man and the girl were going into an office. The man followed her in and then turned to shut the door behind him. The sensors were running back to her, frantic to get to her before the door closed. Taster was last and had to launch himself in a flying leap to get through the narrowing opening, because he had taken the time to put my pen back in my shirt pocket.

As I sat down in front of my computer a few minutes later, I was smiling. Being a computer person has always been an adventure for me.