Shadows

There are shadows on the wall behind my co-workers. I see them, stretching out into the distant corners of the cubicles.

Meet Jerry. He’s a mild-mannered, innocent-eyed software developer. He sits at his computer, working on an algorithm for importing facebook contacts.

I see his shadow, a figure hunched over on a bench, and in the light from the monitors it grows, his shoulders bulging outward, his head deforming, his massive hands cradling a club.

His shadow stretches, and fluidly and powerfully leaves the building, leaving Jerry alone and coding at his desk, shadow-less.

Without his shadow, Jerry seems smaller, more helpless. His eyes turn facebook blue, then pale out and thin as the space separating them from the screen disappears. Jerry is inside the computer, now, and like his shadow, he too is something bigger than himself. He stares out at you from your iPhone, flickers across the LEDs in Times Square for a moment, then merges indistinguishable with the host of designers, project leads, jQuery experts and wild-faced interns whose souls form a homogenous mass of electric, seething across the wires into homes and public spaces.

The illumination is too bright, now, so Jerry’s shadow moves from building to building in the dark spaces, pausing and sliding through gaps in the light. He sees a passing mouse, and snaps its neck with a movement, sliding the body into a pouch on his side for later sustenance.

Following the silent beating of drums (that haven’t been heard out loud for five times a thousand years), he finds the gathering hall, down a subway entrance and through a maintenance passage and into an underground chamber, filled with sweet-smelling smoke, the walls high and indistinct and furry. He respectfully nods to the elders as he enters, and takes his place among the women and men, their dark forms moving sinuously around each other as they laugh and make their greetings.

Amidst the joy of reunion, there is a restlessness to their gathering. They feel the tension, can see the signs of coming hard times. Perhaps a war, or a famine, or a shift in the subtle balance of powers that permits them, from time to time, to slip away from their masters.

In another world, someplace close but very far away, a man sits at a desk, reviewing Jerry’s code, and looking at a line of numbers in a spreadsheet.