Zach's Cat

Zach's Quantum Nose (or Zach's Cat)

The main thing was the hum. That annoying whirring noise, punctuated every revolution with a loud click because the one time it had been repaired, it had been a Monday. As you and I well know, Mondays are the worst day of the week to get any work done, because everyone is still recovering from Saturday. Even though the recovery was supposed to happen on Sunday, it was postponed for family reasons, usually something involving a round of golf and three apple martinis. Now, that particular Monday, the repairman who (a particularly besotted repairman recovering from Sunday, compounded by an extensive Saturday, which really was due a statutory holiday at time and a half from Friday) was the one assigned to fix the motor, did a less than lustrous job of it and now in addition to the hum (which hadn't been fixed) there was the click. However the click wasn't as bad as the hum. Which brings us to Zach.

Zachary Buscatina. Computer technician first class (but not on Mondays) who at this very moment, was enduring the hum. Although he had graduated from his technical class with the highest honours, right now Zach (which is what everyone called him, friend or not) was trying very hard not to think about the hum that was coming from the industrial strength floor waxer that he was operating. Precisely, he was operating the industrial floor waxer on the third floor of Maxwell's Silver Physics building in Albeqerque, New Mexico. Zach was an excellent computer technician. This point mustn't be elaborated upon, but simply made. Therefore, the following will make much more sense. Due to Zach's technical skill and prowess, his user-jitsu, admin-fu and cable-ratay, he had worked himself out of a job. Within six months he had turned a backwards, rat-nested monstrosity of a system into a clean functional almost self-regulating machine. Unfortunately, Zach had never been gifted with the ability to look busy when he really wasn't (which gave him considerable trouble in grade school) and therefore his supervisors had decided that Zach should also take on custodial duties (with a small bonus). Zach, ever patient with his lot in life, shouldered the burden and went about contentedly waxing, but for the hum.

Finished with the hallway, Zach proceeded into the fifth room of the night. He preferred to do all the south rooms first, then the hallway, then the north rooms, an idiosyncracy he refused to explain to himself. This particular room had been a clean room but was now in the process of being converted to an executive suite for the third cousin of the CEO who happened to enjoy the brisk desert air every third weekend in May. This didn't concern Zach, mostly because he was kept in the dark about the whole thing, although if he had known (as he is about to) then he might have decided to let the room sit dirty. Zach pulled the humming monstrosity behind him as he entered the room and stopped short as the hum crunched to an arm-wrenching stop. He was in need of a closer outlet. Undaunted, he retrieved the end of the cord and set about finding an outlet in the room.

Littered with pieces of styrofoam, a few crates and an enormous file cabinet, Zach quickly realised that the only outlet in the room was directly behind the file cabinet. Zach pushed and pulled but the (locked) file cabinet would only move an inch on a hidden track, giving barely a hand-span of space between it and the wall. Flat against the wall, Zach's arm began inching into the darkness beyond the file cabinet. Feeling nothing but wall, he continued down, and down. Squatting now, he began moving his arm back and forth in a demented invisible wave, but nothing but smooth painted plaster was beneath his fingertips. Suddenly, his hand brushed cool metal, but it was only for a moment. Seized with certainty, he quickly withdrew his and and grasped the end of the cord. He reached in again and tried the plug. The angle was too awkward while squatting. Zach lay down on the floor and tried again. This time he met with success and the familiar hum flooded the room. Along with the hum came dust, silvery, hard to see dust. Zach was still peering into the crack that had consumed his arm when it hit him, full in the face. Zach ttried not to breath it in, but one little bit got into his nose, then tickled and tickled. Zach tried to lurch away but his arm! His arm was still stuck behind the file cabinet and stopped just in time to avoid wrenching his shoulder, then his eyes watered, he drew in a quick breath and sneezed. Now this wasn't an ordinary sneeze, you see. This might actually not have been a sneeze at all, but we can only be certain if we don't think about it too much, because it was a quantum sneeze. That silvery metallic dust was actually a buildup of quantum particles, which had desperately hid from the hopeful researchers, only to find themselves forced out of hidnig and then put directly into Zach's nose.

Now, Zach, poor soul, did not know this at the time (but he would soon) and thought little of it, as he resumed waxing the floor. It was just past eleven when he returned home, and he fell into a deep but strange dream.
You see, the dream involved a cat. Knowing dreams it may not even have actually been a cat at all, or even a dream. This dream was strange, however, but knowing dreams, that isn't strange at all. Zach remembered a cat, or at least believed he remembered a cat, and it hovered in and out of his mind's eye with terrifying speed. The past present and future were laid out to him, and all of his memories and some soon-to-be memories wafted by him, and suddenly all the answers seemed right underneath his nose.

Fear wasn't something Zach normally encountered in his life, even though he was plagued with inadequacy. It wasn't that Zach couldn't be scared, it's that he never had had reason to be. He had spent his entire life in New Mexico, and the most pungent worry he had ever faced had involved his car's gas mileage. (It was fixed with a new air filter, if you're wondering.) He was great with computers and had spent most of his time commuting. When he wasn't driving he was usually being driven. He was in the bus to school and back, driving in high school, driving to technical school, then driving to work. His most daring weekend involved driving with his girlfriend to the local mall on Christmas Eve, and he had only done that because she had bet he couldn't do anything last minute (he had mail-ordered the gifts in August). Zach wasn't an overly careful chap, he just hadn't had a reason to be daring, reckless or any other sort of exciting adjective. This dream, for a change of pace, was scary. Zach was on shifting ground and suddenly all the possiblities started opening up to him. He was still scared when he woke up.

He ate his cereal in his customary manner. Groggily, lights-off, eyes closed, with bunny slippers. It wasn't until his sixth and a half bite, mid-chew, five razor sharp pieces of Captain Crunch in his mouth, that he saw the cat dish. His first thought was that the cat dish had always been there, since the cat was his old roommate's but he didn't think the roommate would remember the cat either. The cat, nowhere to be seen, definitely had a dish. That, he was sure of. However, he wasn't so sure about the cat. He hadn't seen the cat dish, since his eyes were closed, but when he opened his eyes, it was still there. Finishing his cereal, he walked over to the cat dish and poured the last bit of milk into the bowl. He smelled soap on the way to the sink, but forgot about it while washing his dish. It wasn't until he was rinsing his hair in the shower that he smelled the coffee. He was surprised that the beans had wafted that far through his apartment, but sumatran beans may have enough third world wiliness to pass through any barrier. He liked the idea of Wily Coffee, like it could make people clever. After pouring the coffee into his travel mug, he walked out the door, greeted by the bright desert sun, and sneezed. Zach had a semi-rare condition where every time he was put into bright light after being in darkness, he sneezed. It didn't happen every time, but it happened often enough that Zach knew to be the first out the exit if he was going for a weekend matinee at the movies. Zach walked back down his hallway, unlocked the cat flap, then drove to work.

Zach focused furiously on the pink hair. If he looked hard enough he believed he could see tiny gnomes peeking out from it, grinning mischieviously as they pulled guide wires and spoke in code to maintain the constant droning coming from the mouth. Full of white, capped teeth and surrounded by garish lipstick, the VP's secretary's mouth was something Zach only ever wished to consider in a tangential manner if he couldn't avoid it. Right now the pink hair was telling him about how the VP had heard that the latest trend was microvideoblogging and now he needed 30 second video reports from each employee every two hours. She wanted to know how Zach Would Implement That Right Now. Zach, oblivious to productivity issues, blithely replied that he could do it easily by creating a macro that would lock out all users every two hours, with a webcam script that would record video for exactly thirty seconds, save it to the company server, then e-mail the V.P. so he could view it on his blackberry. It wasn't until he finally tore his gaze away from the pink hair that he took in the horrified expressions from the other staff on the floor. Their horrified gazes held for several long seconds before Zach realised he had made a grave mistake. The janitor glared at him, his own personal JaniCam winking cheerily from the front bin of his trolley.

Nodding briskly, the Hair snatched a mop from the trolley and gave it to him.
"Oh there's been a bit of a mess in Men's bathroom. Would you be a dear and clean it up?"

Mop in one hand, bucket in the other, Zach walked obliviously between cubicles of pity and disgust. He was halfway to the bathroom when he smelled the smoke. "Does anyone smell that?"

Heads turned at Zach, curious about this new talkative side of him. Zach rarely spoke up, let alone about interesting smells. "It smells like smoke." People sniffed the air. One heavyset man said "I don't smell anything." The smell kept building. "No really," Zach insisted "I smell smoke, I think there's a fire."
People began smelling standing up, but they just shook their heads. Nobody else smelled that something was off. Zach knew he smelled smoke, and it became stronger with every step towards the Men's Washroom.
"It's coming from the Men's washroom!"

The smell was so thick Zach was gagging. Everyone stared at the bathroom. Silence.
At this point, Zach couldn't take it anymore. It had begun to smell like burning hair and that's one of the worst smells of all.

"Does nobody smell that? We have to get out of here now! There's a fire!"
He ran to the wall and pulled the alarm. The bells went off and the red lights came up, and everybody looked at him like he was crazy. Zach decided it was time to be crazy just enough

"This is actually a fire drill, it's a new tactic by the V.P. He wants to see how fast we can respond in the event of an emergency. I didn't want to be the one to tell you, but I'm now the Fire Safety Janitorial Computer Technician of our floor."s
People gaped in disbelief, although the awe from Pink Hair was positively radiant. She beamed then turned to the rest of the staff: "Ok everyone, this is now officially a fire drill, let's all go and get to our assigned positions." Grumbling, the whole floor began walking towards stairs.

Once in the parking lot, the whole body of staff stood outside in the parking lot. Some were still garbed in their clean room outfits, having run at the first sounding of the alarm. Now they all stood in the desert heat, grumbling about leaving a perfectly good building. The pink haired secretary (Wendy, as she was known in younger, prettier days) was giving Zach a good dressing down about starting a fire drill without first informing her, since she had thought of herself as very much in the loop with the V.P., when the building exploded.

It burned for five days, mostly because the CEO had been keeping all of his old tires from his BMW's in one of the subbasements, instead of paying for disposal. Five metric tons of tires burn for a very long time. After the explosion, Zach had worn a stunned expression for a few days, then informed that the whole company would be taking a loss, so everyone would get two weeks of severance while the CEO and VP collected their full year's salary and transferred their portfolios to the parent company. In the meantime, everyone would have their jobs back when the complex was finished rebuilding and remodeling in three years, unless they wished to add Construction Technician to their list of titles. This being a recession, more than a few did.

However, that day, after the explosion, the firefighters and a good deal of explaining, Zach went back home, washed the rubber smell off his body, fed the cat then went to bed.