Crucial Post

As I was leaving work yesterday, I found several crumpled sheets of paper wedged underneath a waste bin in the B3 stairwell of my company's parking garage. I untwisted the mass of stationary and tried to make sense of the document. The six grimy pages contained what looked like a manifesto, or perhaps notes for a speech. The handwriting was terrible, a puzzling maze of smudged scrawls and scribbled asides. It looked as though some frantic mental patient had written it on a dare, and the apparent subject matter didn't discourage my assumption.

I spread the pages on top of the trunk of my car, fetching a notepad and pen from my briefcase. With care, I began to decipher each word and piece together every sentence. As I worked, a few people from my office entered the parking level. They were on the way to their own cars, ready to leave for the day, and noticed that I was up to something. I slid my briefcase over the pages of the speech as they approached me. I told them everything was fine, to go off and enjoy their night. They eventually left me alone, and I continued my work.

It took quite a long time to legibly transcribe the entirety of the speech. I was careful to maintain the proper order, as the treatise seemed to veer off into wild digressions as it slowly snaked its way toward resolution. Once every bit of text was there in my notepad, I was able to read the document in full. However, its purpose still eluded me, still begged for comprehension that the document itself did not provide.

If this were indeed a speech, it surely would have been meant for a department much different than the one I managed. Its conclusion was unfathomable to me. I couldn't imagine anyone from the company suggesting that my team should open the trench, that we should peer into the hypnotic eyes of our shadow selves on the other side of the invisible fold. After all, it was my department's job to keep the dark portrait of humanity from that other world as far away as possible.

I packed up and drove home, tried my best later to hide my unease from my wife and kids.

I couldn't get to sleep that night; nothing seemed to quiet my mind. It occurred to me that the speech was likely an early draft, carelessly abandoned in favor of an updated version. Or versions. That was the natural order beyond the trench, after all: many versions of the same world, bound together by the one that was determined to absorb all the rest. We enjoyed ignorance for far too long, but we learned from the absorption of others what horrors can fill a void. If this speech was a call for us to abandon our crucial post, then I would have to be ready to demonstrate the depth of the trench.

Today, I am ready for the next phase. Perhaps it will be an unscheduled meeting, perhaps it will circulate as an office memo from an unknown source. That's all it will take for me to alert my superiors on the 38th floor. If they will not listen to me, or if they are already party to this madness - which I fear that they are - then I will alert the other inhabitants of my world. I will start with my coworkers and our clients, then every contact I've encountered in this business over the years. I will hide out for a while on B3, bide my time until those that would silence me have stopped looking, and then I'll escape the building to warn anyone within earshot of my voice until I can reach the largest stage that I can find. I have prepared a speech of my own.