Quitting Time

Quitting can be hard to do…

Today is the last day, he decided, looking up at the 67 story building that had owned his life for the past ten years. Definitely the last day. He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and strode with a determined stride through the large double doors and up the elevators to his supervisor’s office.

“Ah, Eliot, just the person I wanted to see.” Douglas greeted him with his usual forced joviality. “Have you sorted out what was disturbing the water elementals in sector 41?”

“I… yes. But first. I have something I need to say.” He took another deep breath and squared his shoulders again. It was time.

“Yes, yes. Hold this for a moment, would you?” Douglas handed him a lure rock, like the ones they used to coax out reluctant earth elementals. The inscribed rune looked a little odd, though. As he took it, he could feel the tingle of magic run through him. What was that about?

Douglas shuffled some papers a moment, then turned to look at him again. “Now, you were saying?”

“Um… I was…”

“The disturbance? The water elementals?” Douglas prodded with exaggerated patience.

“Oh. Yes. It was a child with extraordinary talent with earth elementals, getting them to make tangles that partially blocked the flow of the water pipes, and aggravating the water elementals. She didn’t even know she was doing it, but she’s safely in elemental school now, where she’ll be contained until she has better control.”

“Ah, good. Good. I’m sure admin will be happy that they have someone with such talents in the company pipeline, now. Thank you for the report. Carry on.”

He hesitated, sure that there was something that he had forgotten. Something he needed to do…?

Douglas had returned to his paperwork, but now looked back up. “Was there something else?”

“I… no. No, I just…”

Douglas nodded a little impatiently. “All right, then. I’m sure you have work to do.”

“Of course…” He turned and headed to the door of the office, though a little slower than usual.

“Eliot!”

He turned back, and Douglas nodded to the rock still in his hands.

Oh. Right. A little embarrassed at his forgetfulness, he retraced a couple steps to place the rock on Douglas’ desk, then headed for the door, briskly this time.

He went to his desk, checked messages, looked at maintenance reports, looked at incidence reports, called the East pumping station to check on some details, ate his lunch, talked to his colleagues, made some slightly derisive jokes about air elementals and the mages that worked with them, read some more reports, did some filing, and headed out for the day.

As he walked across the plaza in front of the Water Department building, the feeling of something left undone that he had had in Douglas’ office returned. Had he forgotten to file the report on the girl who had unintentionally causing the problems? No… no, he had done that. Then what…?

He kept walking, turning it over and over in his mind, trying to trace back where the feeling was coming from. It was a strange, empty feeling, like something should be there, but wasn’t. He was distracted enough, paying attention to the feeling in his belly instead of the traffic around him, that he nearly stepped in front of a city bus coming full speed down the street.

A hand grasped his collar from behind and yanked him back as the bus flew by, the air elementals pushing it screeching barely intelligible curses and insults at him as they went. He stood there, trying to catch his breath, but his savior, the person who had yanked him back from certain death, grabbed his arm and spun him around.

“Eliot, what was that about?” She was looking at him intensely, a mix of dismay and concern on her face.

He frowned. “Do I know you?”

The dismay increased by an order of magnitude. “Oh, void. They got to you, didn’t they. They saw you coming.”

He frowned even deeper; what she was saying wasn’t making anything any clearer. “Look, I’m grateful for what you just did for me, here,” he waved in the direction of the curb where he could have met his grisly death, “but I don’t know you, you’re not making any sense, and I need to go.” He turned as decisively as he could under the circumstances, in the direction of home.

“Eliot, wait!”

There was something in her voice that made him wait despite himself. He half turned back to her. She held up two fingers and a thumb, and manifested a flame. This wasn’t anything extraordinary, any mage with basic control of fire elementals could do that. Except… except… this wasn’t a manifestation of a fire elemental. This was… something else. He turned the rest of the way, fascinated.

She dismissed the flame and dropped her hand. He raised his eyes to hers. Now that he looked at her, there was something familiar…

She touched one finger to his forehead and -

It all came back in a rush that made him half curl up there in the street and clutch at his head. After a moment, once the discomfort of the in-rushing memory had subsided, he looked back up at her. At Dorothy, who was looking at him with that same mix of dismay and concern.

“They…”

She nodded. “They knew, somehow.”

“And they…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish that thought. “So… that’s it? They know, they won’t let me leave…”

She gave him a disgusted look. “What, you don’t succeed the first time so you give up? You’d never have gotten as far as you have if you had done that before. It will be hard. Harder than we thought. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”

“But they…”

“…will try to stop you. Again. You’re better than this. You can do more, and they’re stopping you. Don’t let them stop you.”

“But how…”

She sighed and ran her hand through her hair, a frustrated gesture. “I don’t know, exactly. But you have to be more determined than they are.”

He took a deep breath, grimacing a little. “More determined. Right.”

She put a hand on his arm. “Look, I can’t keep talking to you here. It might already look odd, us talking this long. I’ll watch for you tomorrow.”

He nodded and headed for home.

“I have something I need to tell you, Douglas.”

“Is that so? I’ll be with you in a moment. But could you hold this rock for me?”

“Um… no.”

Douglas looked momentarily nonplussed. “Come on, Eliot, help out a guy, would you?”

He took a quick look around, scooped up a clipboard and held it out for Douglas to put the rock on. Douglas did, with a look that he couldn’t quite decipher.

Douglas shuffled through some papers, before turning his attention back. “Now, what were you saying?”

He took a deep breath. He could do this. “I quit. I need to get out of here. I’m done.” He said it fast, to get it out, so it was said.

Douglas frowned at him. “Right. Right. Of course. You have every right to terminate your contract with us. Let me get the form, I need you to sign it.” He rummaged in his filing cabinet for a moment, and placed a form on his desk, and produced a fancy enameled pen from a drawer. “Here,” Douglas said, handing the pen over, “Make it official.”

He took the pen, and felt a tingle of magic up his arm. A bespelled pen? That was odd. He uncapped the pen and turned to… what was he doing…?

“Eliot!” Douglas said with his usual forced good cheer. “Eliot, we seemed to have lost you there for a moment. Didn’t you sleep well last night or something? You were going to sign this report on the pump maintenance.”

Right. The report. The one right there on the desk. Eliot signed it quickly and handed the pen back to Douglas. That wasn’t like him, to file a report without signing it like he was supposed to. Sloppy. Unacceptable.

“I’m sorry about that…”

“It’s all right, it’s all right. We all make mistakes. Carry on.”

He nodded and strode off to see what was waiting for him on his desk.

“Douglas. I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, Eliot. Good. I wanted to talk to you about those water flow issues in the East pumping station. What was our last water elemental count?”

“I… I’ll have to look that up. I’ll get it for you, but first,” He took a deep breath to steady himself, but Douglas spoke first.

“How about you go there and look into it personally? That water flow could become a significant problem if it isn’t handled correctly now. Go talk to the people out there, get on top of it.”

“Well, first I need to-”

“You’re my top guy, Eliot. I don’t know how I’d manage without you.”

He felt his cheeks burn at this. Determination. Like Dorothy said. He was determined. “I’m sorry Douglas, but I quit.”

Douglas gave him a long look, full of disappointment and dismay.

“The forms. I’ll sign the forms and make it official.”

“Of course, of course.” Douglas rummaged in his filing cabinet and pulled out the forms.

He pointedly ignored the enameled pen when it was offered, and signed using his own pen.

“All right then. I’ll pass these along. In the meantime… take care of the issue of the water flow before you go, would you?”

He nodded, breathing a long, silent sigh of relief. It was done. At last. He went to his desk to take a look at the messages waiting for him.

A little later in the day he was pulling a stack of reports out of an intraoffice mail envelope when a small piece of paper fluttered to the floor. When he picked it up he felt a small tingle of magic up his arm, and he turned the paper over to see a rune inscribed on it. He frowned. It looked similar to a capture rune they used for unruly elementals, but it was just a little different… He shrugged and turned back to his work. He frowned a little as he did so, though, because he suddenly felt like he had forgotten something…

“Oh, void it. I wish there was something I could do that would give you some sort of protection.”

He rubbed his forehead at the lingering headache left by Dorothy’s restoration of his memories and intentions. “I wish I could send you in there for me. They wouldn’t know what to make of you. You’d have been and gone before they gathered their wits.”

She frowned at him. “So why don’t I?”

He shook his head. “My contract states that I have to terminate it in person, not through a proxy. And if you’re thinking about disguising yourself magically as me, don’t. It wouldn’t get through the anti-sabotage protections they have on the building.”

She made a disgusted noise. “All right then. How about something non-magical. Low tech. Here.” She grabbed his hand, pulling a permanent market from her pocket, and wrote I QUIT on the back of his hand. “There. Give that a try.”

He looked at it dubiously. “Maybe that will work. I can try.”

“Douglas, I need to speak to you.”

“Of course, Eliot. Just a moment.”

A few minutes later, he walked out of Douglas’ office, but caught a glimpse of his hand and what was written there. He stopped in his tracks. He turned and reentered the office.

He went to his desk to check his messages. He flipped a page and saw what was on his hand. He stared at it for a minute or two. He grabbed a file box, dumped it’s contents on the floor, piled in the few personal items he had at his desk, and headed for Douglas’ office.

He looked at the box in his hands. “Wait… are you firing me?”

“No, no. Were you not listening? We’re not firing you, we’re promoting you.”

“Oh. But…” He reached into the box, and in the process, saw his hand. He stopped, looking at what was written there. “Actually, Doug, you can keep your promotion. I quit.”

“Eliot…”

“No, no more tricks. I’m leaving. Have fun with the water elementals without me.” He turned, walked out of the office. He made it to the elevator.

The doors opened on the lobby. He took a deep breath, repositioned his hands on his box so he could see the writing on the one hand clearly, and started walking with as confident as stride a he could muster. He reached the doors. He pushed through them.

The air on the other side never tasted so sweet.