Spike

No one explained why I got the task of packing up the dead guy's office, but when the director himself called, I couldn't argue that it wasn't in my job description. It wasn't the strangest thing I'd been asked to do since coming to work at the Library, and choosing me probably had more to do with my known lack of social life. Sherry's probably got a hot date with a TV dinner and some pixels. He can stay late on a Friday.

The desk had been unremarkable, considering the owner, until I found a drawer of random things. I picked up the railroad spike first, even though it was in the back under a brass statue of an elephant and a small bag made of denim. It was rusted, heavy in my hand. I couldn't decide whether to pack it in one of the boxes, or throw it away, and while I was thinking, leaning toward keeping it for myself, Gina came in. "How's it going?"

"It's weird," I said, not turning around to face my boss. "How do you pack up someone else's life? It's not like I knew him well." I took a breath and turned, holding out the spike. "What do I do with stuff like this?"

I wasn't ready for her eyes to go wide behind her block-framed glasses. "Where did you find that?"

"It was in one of the drawers. What's so special about it?"

"If we could get this to him..." she started, stepping toward me and reaching out her hand.

I closed my hand around the squared edges, and pulled back. "What are you talking about? I thought he was dead."

"Gone," she corrected, and it looked like she forced her glance from my hand to my face. "He's gone, but he's probably still alive." I shook my head. There'd been a memorial service yesterday - okay, they called it a celebration of his life - which stupid me had thought meant that after being missing for two months, the guy was presumed dead. Gina said, "He's probably stuck in a reality shift, and if he had the spike, it might be possible for him to shift back." Gina held out her hand. "That's why we had you do his office. This kind of thing might hide from the rest of us."

In six months of working at the Library, I'd heard a lot of strange things, but a knick-knack that could hide was stranger than most. But I ignored Gina's hand because the spike wanted me to keep it safe. It wanted to leave. It wanted to get back to work.

I walked past Gina without a word, and she turned to follow me. "What are you doing? Please, just give that to me. You don't understand what it is."

I stopped when we reached the elevator, and pressed the down button. "What is it?"

"It's a railroad spike."

"I can see that. Why is it important?"

"Robert Benjamin was a balance magician, and his teacher used to make him walk the rails out at the railroad tracks. The spike was like--"

"A magic wand?" I interrupted. One of the things I'd had the hardest time getting used to on this job was the consulting magicians. At first I thought they were computer geeks, like Unix Wizards, but it didn't take long before I was set straight.

She shook her head. "More like a talisman, or better yet a study guide. A reminder."

"Reminder of what?"

The elevator dinged, and she followed me inside. "You'll have to ask him."

"How can I ask him? He's gone."

She smiled at me. "Where are you going right now?"

"Down," I said, knowing I was being pedantic and annoying.

She shook her head as if to clear it. "See, we couldn't find it, weren't sure it was there, but I had an idea you might--. Are you sure you're not a magician?"

The elevator doors opened, and I walked through the high, marble lobby to the doors, suddenly trying to get somewhere, to run away from the question. Gina took my elbow and guided me over to one of the lobby couches. She sat in front of me on the low table. "Sherry," she started, but I kept looking at the street beyond the glass doors. There was somewhere I was supposed to go. "Sherwood," she said, her voice sharper and sounding like my mother. She didn't look like my mother, who would never have dared that sharp, New York haircut, or the chartreuse cargo pants. I suppose that's why Gina was an esoteric librarian, instead of the normal kind.

My next thoughts came out aloud. "You know, when I took the job in Information Architecture, I didn't know I'd be helping to making actual stuff out of ideas."

"I know," Gina said, "but you took it well."

"Now I have a rusted iron railroad spike taking me for a walk." It wasn't until I said it that I understood what was happening. The spike knew where to go, how to find Robert Benjamin. I looked at my feet, and they were nearly vibrating in my loafers at the need to be moving. "I don't think all those prep schools prepared me for this. Should have gone to Hogwarts."

"Don't be stupid. Hogwarts isn't real," Gina said. I glared at her. "You know what I mean. There's an exclusion rule for books, for fictional realities."

I knew. It was part of the strange calculus I'd been taught when I took the job, equations with a non-numeric symbol system. What's the product of a meme and an anti-hero, integrated over the exchange of ideas in an internet chat room? I'd learned how to do the math. I passed the railroad spike from my right hand to my left and looked at where the rust had left orange spots on my skin. They might or might not have meaning, like tea leaves. I chose to believe they were rust spots. I glanced up at Gina, but she was looking at my hand. "Damn," she said. "I'm not good at this."

"They're nothing," I said, wiping my palm on the fabric of the couch. "I have to go now." I gestured with the spike. There was nothing for it but to follow the lead. In the back of my mind, I knew this was strange, but nothing had been normal since my on-line resume had been spotted by the Library.

"Do you know where you're going?" Gina asked. I shook my head. "I mean, we asked you to clean out his desk, because we hoped, maybe - and now his talisman is leading you to him. Or at least I hope that's where it's taking you. Do you mind it? Are you okay?"

"Of course I mind." But I didn't mind, really. I was about to ask Why me? but something like excitement trailed up my arm from the spike, and it didn't seem so important to know. I wasn't sure where the feelings came from - me, or it - but I knew we were in this together. I stood and walked toward the door. Gina was only slowing us down. When I reached the street I knew which way to go, weaving through the city crowds as if the trail were a dynamic equation plotted with a temporal function. There were alleys that had never been there before, and I knew which ones didn't balance, which ones reached unity. Within three turns, I was somewhere else. Eight more, one with a purple sky, and I knew we were in the right place.

It was still a city, but the architecture was different. It took a while to get it, but there were no curves in any of the decorations of the buildings, or the handbags of the women. Traffic lights were square. The spike and I stopped at a light, unsure of what to do next, using the pause for traffic as a pause for taking stock. The spike wanted me to go up, and I could sense its frustration that I couldn't fly.

"Let me drive," I muttered, crossing when the light changed, and walking into the door of a high rise office building. A desk with a security guard stood between me and the elevators.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm here to see Robert Benjamin," I said, and then I knew where. "Thirty-third floor."

"Scalia and Townsend," the guard nodded. "Are you expected?"

"I think so," I said. "I don't have a specific appointment, though."

The guard looked me over. I palmed the spike as best as I could, and glanced around, noting how most of the people moving through the lobby had on suits with ties or skirts. My tweed sport coat and khakis must have seemed innocuous enough. "Go on up, then."

We took the elevator up, pressing the square button with angular threes. The name on the door hand a lightening S and a trapezoid O, and behind the door there was a receptionist who liked my smile. "He's in accounting," she said. "I'll take you back." We threaded through a maze of cubicles, and she stopped at the entrance to one of the identical boxes, but the spike would have been able to find it. I looked inside.

The man I knew as Robert Benjamin sat at a desk, looking intently at a spreadsheet on a computer screen. He wore a bow tie, his hair was neatly combed, and he looked like a young professor, not the hotshot wizard I'd worked with once.

"Bob, you have a visitor," she said, which surprised me. No one called him Bob.

He blinked up at the receptionist's voice, and looked at me, squinting slightly. "I'm sorry?"

I smiled at the receptionist. "Thank you," I said, in what I hoped was a politely dismissive tone. I walked into the cubicle and leaned against the desk on the far side from the door. He looked... rabbity. The spike was happy. I was happy. We were happy. He was confused.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

I leaned over and pushed in his keyboard tray, and lay the spike down in front of the monitor.

I was myself again, alone again, suddenly empty of the purpose I'd felt for the last hour. I looked at the spike, but Bob Benjamin was reaching for it, hunched and uncertain. He sat up when his fingers touched it, and his shoulders straightened as he picked it up and his fingers curled around the square length. He brought the head to his lips, not to kiss it, but just to touch for a brief second, and then Robert Benjamin turned to look at me.

"It's Sherry, right?" he asked, reaching to unknot his bow tie and unbutton the top button of his shirt. I nodded, relieved, even though I didn't know I'd been worried. "They sent the preppy," he mused. "How did you get here?"

I gestured at the spike. "It knew the way."

"Interesting," he said, running his fingers through his hair, so it fell into his usual artful mess. "So, how long have I been gone?"

"About two months." Without the spike I lost any sureness. Benjamin intimidated me - all the magicians did - and now I was standing in a parallel reality, and only he could get me out of it. "We, uh, had a service."

"Please tell me everyone loved me," he said. I forced a smiled and shrugged, feeling stupid. "Did you find the spike?" he asked. I nodded. "Hmm, of course you did. Well." He pushed his chair back from his desk, took the suit coat off a hanger rigged to the cubical wall, and slung it over his shoulder. "Shall we blow this popsicle stand?"

"Sure." I followed as he stalked down the aisle, and I glanced back as we walked, watching people pop their heads up to find out what was going on.

"Hi, Bob," said the receptionist. "Going somewhere?"

He reached over and put a finger under her chin. I should have been cheesy, but it wasn't, and she blushed. "Goodbye. I resign. Accountancy is losing a bright light of numerical accuracy, but I'm sure the field will survive my departure. More subtle mathematics await," he said, turning to me and almost winking.

I followed him into the elevator, out into the street and down alleys that lead to different cities, each with its own air and varied sky. I couldn't sense the equations underlying it any more, and way was longer than I'd taken, but I followed, curious. Eventually, we ended far from the office district of whatever city we were in, near the warehouses and rail yards.

"Where are we?" I asked.

He hung his suit coat on a rusting sign, and slipped the spike into his back pocket as he rolled up his sleeves. "Need to do a little experiment. Remind me how you were trained."

"Computer science. Systems architecture. Master's in Information Science."

"How did you come to the Library?"

"They emailed me off an Internet job site. I don't think the interview prepared me for what I was getting into." That was an understatement.

"But you're not going anywhere." I shook my head, and he nodded, and then looked at his shoes. "At least Bob had practical taste in footwear," he muttered to himself, then looked at me. "How'd you find the spike?"

"They sent me to clean out your desk," I said. "It was in a drawer."

"Which you shouldn't have been able to find. Take off your jacket."

"Can I ask what we're doing here?"

"Good shoes," he said toward my feet, and then he stepped up on to one of the rails. He stood perfectly, no wobbling, and gestured. "Hang up your coat, and step up. We're going to do a little lesson in applied metamathematics."

"I don't understand."

"Let's find out if you're a balance magician, or something else. Oh, please," he said after a few seconds of me trying to process anything he'd just said. "Close your mouth and step up here. Do you want to change departments, or don't you?"

"I'm not a magician."

He pulled the spike out of his pocket, somehow twirling the heavy, unbalanced object around his finger. "This says otherwise." He tossed it to me, but when it landed in my hand, I felt nothing. I wanted to feel something, to feel the way I had when the spike was bringing me to its master. As if he could sense my thought, he said, "You need to find your own. Besides, it's not the spike, it's the magician. You've got the math down. Move beyond it. Come on up."

I tossed back the spike, took a deep breath, took off my jacket, and rolled up my sleeves.