FIRST DAY AT THE OFFICE by Greg Lammers
He looked at the desk. The things on it, they were his. He was expected here.
A machine on the other side of the room came to life. It hummed a while, then spit out two sheets of paper and the humming wound down. Someone tipped a ceramic mug to their lips. He had a cup much like theirs on his desk. He picked it up and took a drink, it was hot. He’d have to take a smaller drink next time.
None of the others paid any attention. He looked around. Nobody looked at him in an odd manner, or in any manner. They paid no more attention to him than they would to a potted plant that had been there for months.
Relief. He had much to learn, but there was time. The entry of a new entity into a body is violent, on the cosmic plane. Time and space ripped open and then tack welded back together.
In the office cubicle plane, it registers as a cough, or a loud but less than noteworthy clearing of the throat. One startled consciousness jerked out of a body it has grown attached to and hauled off to some other place or some other dimension, and then another, bewildered, slammed into a pile of hard, clunky material.
It came to his attention that the person at the next desk was telling a story about a young one who she was evidently responsible for. He looked up at her, smiled, and made noises, asking for a clarification on the score of a sporting event she’d just mentioned. She stopped and looked at him. Jerry never expressed any interest in her stories.