Between the lines

Looking at the sheet of paper that I had recieved, I was trying to make sense of it. The TV screen had cut back to the news. I wasn't interested in it at all, i had more important things to worry about.

The note was still kind of a blur. I tried some combinations in trying to decifer what it said. I thought back to what I heard from the TV.

"Read between the lines, 01."

What the hell did that mean? Who the hell said it? What the hell was going on? Well, all I could do was find out. I stared at the paper. Read between the lines, I thought. Then it hit me. Read between the lines indeed.

d f e s
k o h s
o i x j
k u r t
y z i q


d o y o u e x i s t

Don't I, I thought. I am here, I am alive, last I checked. I am.

I looked back at the TV, still just the news. Nothing of any real importance. I was late. Lunch break was over twenty minutes ago. I threw on my shoes and dashed out the door, back across the street, through the office doors and in to my chair. No one noticed. No one cared, they were drones just as much as I was. I looked around for the mail boy, maybe he knew about that letter. He was no where around. I turned on my screen when I noticed a card stuck in to my keyboard.

I took it out, looked at it. It was blank, just like the envelope. Plain. I turned around to the guy who sat behind me. His name was Nick. Hadn't spoken more than three maybe four words to me since he joined the ant-farm couple of months back. Nick was busy with his work. Filling blanks. I looked at him for a moment expecting him to notice me. He didn't. I reached out and knocked on his desk. He looked up at me startled. A blank expression on his face.

"Hey, Nick, have you seen the mail boy around?"

Nick looked at me for a moment before he spoke. His voice shaky and uncertain, kind of nervous. "What mail boy" he answered puzzled.

Confused, I turned back and faced my screen. The card was still in my hand. I looked closely at it, there had to be something there. I sighed. It caught the warmth from my breath and turned a slightly different colour. I breathed on it again, this time revealing more of the card. Over and over I did that until the whole card had turned from white to a very dim shade of yellow. There was a small print in the middle.

:eman

Didn't make sense, much like everything else that day. I flipped the card over, it made more sense this time. It read

name:

Well, not much of a difference. "What the hell is this" I mumbled. The text on the card changed. The letters morphed and formed something else:

Invalid Account

The sky shouted thunder, and rain began to pour. The electricity in the office went out. Darkness.

01

I woke up again. There was a dim light shining in to my room. As I rose up from my bed I noticed a few dark clouds above. It's gonna rain, I thought. There was a pain in my back. I had to see Jerry again. Jerry is my doctor a good guy but, he's got some issues. He thinks that there was a Martian landing on earth billions of years before we set foot on the moon. He went on to say that all of our greatest theories, like evolution, were written in the sand by the Martians and we found them and it was imprinted in our brains as primates, therefore, it stuck with us until today.

I told you he's got issues.

I put my feet on the cold floor. I wish I had a carpet in there. I readied myself for work again, I am a drone at a computer company. I basically fill in the blanks in a sequence of scientific anomalies and rythms and stuff. I fill missing spots in it and send it to a server. I've been doing it for six years. I have no idea what I do, or what I contribute to.

I left the house and walked down the street to my office. This city is a dead zone. No one was around, no shops were open, nothing was moving, it was just me. In the middle of a large empty street. A metaphor of my meaningless existence in this world.

The office was basically the same, I walked in and made no difference. I punched in and sat down at my terminal. I received my files and began to work.

The mail boy walked by and tossed an envelope on to my desk.

Wonder what that is, I thought. I looked at it. The envelope had my name on it. That was all. I opened it up and saw a blank piece of paper, except for a block of gibberish in the middle of the page. It read:

d f e s
k o h s
o i x j
k u r t
y z i q

It didn't make any sense. I didn't really bother with it. I was hoping it meant that I was fired.

Lunch break had come early today. I stepped back in to the empty streets and crossed over to my apartment. I walked in sat on the couch and turned on the TV. I opened a bag of chips that I have next to my couch at all times. The news was on. I was still baffled about that random note I had received. The news was bland, something about the price of eggs going up again.

The channel changed by itself. There was static. I reached for the remote, but, then I noticed something. The screen flickered. Once. Twice. Three times. Then in the static I saw a face. Or what looked one. I heard something different in the static. It sounded like a voice. I heard my name. I moved to the screen trying to hear better.
The screen went black.
Then I heard it clearly.

"Read between the lines, 01."