Major Nonconformance

Compliance is beautiful

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Bill listened to his Volkswagon’s locks engage with a pert beep as he walked away. The Monday morning sun was warm, but a spring chill still nipped at him through his button-up white and navy dogtooth dress shirt. There was a good faction of the office petitioning for office casual, button-downs and short sleeves, maybe a polo here and there. Slacks for the ladies even. But Bill was not one of them. Once dress-code loosened, so did work ethic, then compliance went right out the window. As he rounded the corner of the glass-fronted building he noticed Jim, one of the accounting guys, engaged in his morning routine. Bill stopped and watched as Jim paced back and forth in front of his Honda. the accountant took a swig from, ostensibly, a bottle of water, and then spit it out into the shrubs in the parking median. Drink, spit, drink, spit. His button-up, buttoned down a button too many, was wrinkled. Bill shook his head, they sold wrinkle free shirts these days. He was going to have to bring this up to HR.

At the front door he scanned his badge and waited for the click of the lock disengaging before pulling the it open.

“Bill! Hey, Bill! Hold the door!”

Bill stood in the doorway, holding the door open just wide enough for himself as Jim came jogging up. He grabbed the handle, but Bill didn’t let go of the door.

“You have to card in,” Bill said, motioning with his free hand to the little black box by the door.

“Oh, come on, you know I work here,” Jim pulled a little harder, Bill held tighter.

“I know you worked here Friday, but I don’t know that you still work here today, so you have to card in.”

“I can’t find my card. I must have left it at home, just let me in.”

“Sorry, I can’t do that. I’ll inform HR that you’ve lost your badge. I’m sure they’ll be out shortly.”

Jim’s expression darkened. “What the hell is wrong with you? I’ll go straight to HR once I’m inside.”

“Sorry.” Bill tugged the door out of Jim’s hand and pulled it shut.

“You fucking asshole!” Jim yelled from the other side, banging on the door with a flat palm. Bill sighed and turned, almost directly into Miranda, the day-glow parakeet that passed for HR. Her tattooed brows arched in unspoken inquisition. They’d had a heated battle over her brows when she was hired. Visible tattoos violated the company dress code.

“Jim forgot his badge.”

“You could have let him in, my office is right by the door.”

“Protocol only exists if you follow it, and if you don’t have protocol, you have chaos.” Bill didn’t wait for her response, he had work to do. As he walked to his office he heard Jim and Miranda behind him, talking in low tones. Griping, no doubt. Gossip was the enemy of productivity, HR should know that. Accounting should know that gossip is the enemy of accuracy…

Bill closed his office door and took a breath in the silence and dark. Then flipped on the light. He walked around to his chair and sat, setting his lunchbox on the desk and, looking at it, he pushed it a few inches away from him. He opened his email and read the top few subject lines.

“New protocols waste production time”
“New incident reporting regulations are too time consuming”
“What was wrong with the old vendor forms?”
“Spilling bleach is an incident???”
“I don’t understand the need for departmental inspections.”
“The guys don’t want to wear the new gloves”

No one appreciated compliance. Not until someone died from not following the rules anyway. THEN, as the lawyers descended, the rules mattered. Bill quickly scrolled down the list of twenty new emails from people griping at him, then swiped the mouse to the bottom right corner of his screen to lock it. Protocol. Always lock your screens for security. You’d think IT would love him but no, they hated his monthly security camera logs and all the paperwork he asked them for. He rifled through the stack of incident reports in the bin on his desk. Three new reports just yesterday. Cuts, bruises, damaged product, none of it had to happen. If everyone would just-

Bill took a deep breath and grabbed his lunch box. Everyone would just follow the rules after today. He opened his office door to find Miranda standing there, her expression a storm cloud hovering over her large gold necklace. Was she wearing the lost city of El Dorado?

“Jim is really upset.”

“That’s an HR problem. I followed protocol.”

“It is an HR problem, a problem I have with you.”

Bill tried to side step her, but she blocked him.

“Listen, Miranda, I’m sorry, but we have protocol for a reason. If Jim doesn’t want to follow it, that is disciplinary problem. In fact I should probably write up an incident report for this.”

“Bill, you were rude. You can follow protocol and still treat your coworkers with respect.”

Bill stood staring at her. What did respect have to do with protocol? All the rainbow dye in her blouse must be leeching into her bloodstream.

“I don’t even know how to respond to that. There are specific security reasons we have front door protocol, by following that protocol, I could be saving lives. Explain to me how that is not respectful?”

Miranda furrowed her brow. “You really don’t get it.”

“I understand just fine. Jim wants special treatment. But he’s not getting it from me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to put my lunch in the fridge.”

Miranda stood her ground, “Please come see me at 1:30 this afternoon. We need to continue this discussion, Jim is not the only one who has a problem with your demeanor.” She stood aside, the bangles on her wrists jangling as she moved.

Bill stalked past her. Kindness killed compliance, how did they not understand that? If he were soft, then they would think him incapable of enforcing regulations. He needed to be firm, apply the rules relentlessly, and with an even hand.

In the kitchen he pulled the door closed behind him and went to the water cooler. From his lunchbox he pulled out a hypodermic needle and uncapped it. This was going to solve everything. The clear liquid inside would save lives and ensure compliance. It was a little miracle he’d been working on. He’d been testing it on his cats and so far the results had been promising, the beasts were less mercurial and destructive for one. They’d finally stopped jumping up on the counters, for another. They were more clingy, but perhaps just because they had less frenetic energy. It was safe, that was the main thing. He’d gotten it by distilling a plant known as Platycerium bifurcatum, the first eusocial plant discovered in the world. Sure, it wasn’t FDA approved, and he hadn’t done any human trials… those points did nibble at his conscience, but it would save so many people from injury and stress. He was doing it for his team.

Moving around the back of the water jug he stabbed the needle in just above the waterline and quickly squeezed in the liquid. There wasn’t any way to stir it in, so he’d have to hope it diffused well over the next couple of days. He had plenty, it was easy to make more. He’d be inoculating the water against noncompliance every time the jug was replaced until he retired a stress-free old man. He replaced the syringe in his lunchbox and pulled out a small tube of silicone sealant, dabbing it on the hole he’d created. He didn’t need the water delivery company complaining about holes in their jugs. Once that was done, he put his lunchbox in the fridge. He always ate in his office, so there was no chance of anyone seeing the syringe or silicone.

On his way back to the office, he passed Jim. The accountant glared at him. Bill smiled and gave a small wave, didn’t want to seem unfriendly. He laughed inwardly. And the truth was, he was ecstatic. Before the end of the day, if all went well, he could see compliance rates soar. He might get more positive, agreeable emails, even. Imagine an inbox full of people praising his safety efforts instead of complaining or arguing. Imagine paperwork turned in on time. Ha! Bill caught himself before he pumped his fist in the hallway. He needed to remain calm, when things got better, then he could celebrate.

But things were already better by the afternoon. In his 1:30 meeting with Miranda she apologized for making protocol seem cumbersome and antithetical to a polite atmosphere. She insisted to Jim that he remember his badge from now on or he would not be allowed in the building until a new one had been made. And Jim nodded along, apologizing and promising never to forget again. All of the emails Bill had sent out in response to complaints came back with sentiments of agreement and support. People thanked him for compliance. He was amazed that the stuff had worked so quickly. He’d expected it to take a few days to kick in. Maybe a week to really get going, but by the end of the day, there were no new incident reports on his desk.

Nor were there any the following day, or the day after that. In fact, Bill’s email inbox on Wednesday was completely empty, no complaints, no arguments. Nothing. He caught up on paperwork and was given all of the logs and back up documentation he asked for. Everyone complied with a smile and a ‘yes, sir.’

On Thursday he spotted Jim in the parking lot with no bottle of… whatever it was and his shirt buttoned all the way up. His badge hung from a lanyard around his neck.

“Good morning, Bill!” Jim reached out to shake his hand, Bill grabbed it with a smile. Jim’s palm felt wet and slick and Bill recoiled without thinking. His palm slid slowly off of Jim’s, like pulling a bare foot out of mud. He looked down, Jim’s skin looked perfectly normal. Bill’s was a little wet.

“Everything ok, Bill?”

Bill looked up. Jim smiled placidly at him.

“Sure, fine. How you feeling, Jim?”

“Great, need to get inside. Must do accounting.” He held up his badge. “Got my badge. Always have my badge, that’s in CP-6, section 4-b.3.” Jim scanned his badge and opened the door when the door lock disengaged. He stood in the doorway and looked at Bill, his eyes suddenly hard. “Scan your badge, Bill. Security only works if we work together.”

“What? Oh right, of course.” Bill reached out and scanned his badge. When the light turned green Jim let go of the door with a smile. Bill noticed his hand came away just fine, no stickiness or residue left behind. His own hand was still moist.

“Bill!”

His head snapped up. The sales manager came out of the sales bullpen at full speed and wrapped Bill in a bear hug.

“I’m so happy to see you this morning! We are not a unit if one person is absent. If just one person is missing, we can’t be whole.”

Bill wiggled out of his grasp, glad that none of his skin was exposed. “Sure, of course. We’re a team!” He tried to sound enthusiastic, but he was a little concerned. The sales manager had done nothing but glower at him for the entire three years they’d worked together, so a hug was- different.

“We’re family! And hey! I’ve got yesterday’s CP-6-7 forms all ready for you! I love those forms, man. Making sure our customers know everything they need to know about our Ts and Cs and that you know that they know. It’s beautiful! So freaking beautiful, man!”

“Yes, it’s- compliance is beautiful.”

“I love you!”

Bill ducked into his office. Maybe he needed to dial back the dosage, or only spike every other water jug. This was a bit much. Before he could sit his phone rang. It snatched it off the cradle.

“It’s Bill.”

“Bill, Hank, we have a bit of a situation out in the warehouse.”

“Ok, Hank, what part?”

“Oh, mainly the arms, everything else is covered by clothing.”

Bill rubbed his temples with his free hand, he had a sinking feeling he knew what Hank meant. “I mean, what part of the warehouse?”

“Sector Three, near the paper shredders.”

“On my way.”

Sector Three was where the paper recycling process started. Paper was loaded into hoppers and covered conveyor belts carried it up to the silos for shredding. It was an impressive bit of machinery. He heard the commotion near the hoppers before he even got to the scene. People were yelling “stay away” and “don’t touch them” in frantic voices. As he pushed through the crowd he was careful not to touch anyone’s skin. In the center of the ring of people were three hysterical figures.

“Bill! We tried to hug and, look!” An older woman named Maria tried to hold up her arms, but they were stuck to another woman’s arms. The third person, a man, was attached by his hands to the women’s right and left wrists, where he’d tried to pull them apart.

It was, horrifying. The skin was melded together like fleshy weld joints. Bill hadn’t been drinking the water, but given what had happened with Jim, he was reluctant to touch them.

“I need some gloves!”

A pair of nitrile gloves was handed to him and he squeezed them on over sweaty palms. He poked experimentally at the place where the man, José’s, left hand held Maria’s right wrist.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” José said, a small smile on his lips, “It actually feels pretty good.” Bill looked at the women, he could see the war going on within them.

“It does feel good, but how do we live like this?” The younger woman, Ajeet, said, her voice was pitched and shaky. Bill looked again, he could still see the outline of all of José’s fingers, they hadn’t… dissolved or anything. If he could just peel them off. He grabbed the man’s thumb and pulled up, the skin that held José and Maria together stretched like thin silicon and both people screamed. Maria leaned against him in a faint.

“It hurts too bad!” José tried to shove Bill away from them with his body.

“It’s ok, we’ll stay this way,” Maria rasped, recovering a little from the pain. Ajeet nodded.

“I felt it, too, I don’t want to be pulled apart.”

“We’ll call an ambulance, at the hospital they’ll have anesthetics, you don’t have to live this way. I’m sure they’ll have you separated by tomorrow.”

“No!” The three said in unison. “We were wrong, this is fine. We’re better together.”

“Uh,” Bill looked up at Hank, “Please call 911. Now.”

“I don’t know, Bill, I think they might be right. We’re better together.” Hank started unbuttoning his company uniform shirt.

“Woah, woah, there are strict protocols against being out of uniform in the warehouse, Hank!” Bill was grasping at straws, he side-eyed the rest of the crowed, they were shuffling nervously, he saw some toying with their buttons, too. What the hell should he do, get them all to drink regular water, flush their systems? How was he going to do that? How much water would it take? Wasn’t there anyone who didn’t drink the water?

“Don’t worry, Bill, when we’re all one, we’ll be able to do all the jobs together. But we must be connected. We must be one.”

“Nope, this isn’t happening. Shit!” Bill whirled around, the small crowd was closing in around him, stripping off their clothes and joining together, their flesh melding and melting into one another. He heard bones cracking as bodies entwined. But all of the employee’s held expressions of ecstasy on their faces as they were subsumed into the mass.

He saw his opening, a gap under the conveyor belts, and ran for it, slipping through and around the crowd. He ran for the front of the office, surely up there they’d still retain some sense. They all drank fancy bottled water and expensive protein shakes. He slammed through the double doors and ran down the short hallway.

“Oh fuck.” He was met with a writhing wall of flesh, the twenty-three people employed in the office were now one, a giant slug of a creature with twenty-three heads sticking out at various places. Arms and legs had been assimilated, but some stuck out at clearly broken angles. Hair and breasts and genitals, weird angles of spines and ribcages, pocked and jutted and flopped out all over the patchwork flesh-mass. Bill was awestruck. What had he done?

“Food!” Cried Jim’s head, and the rest turned toward Bill. “Grab!” Said Miranda’s head, her tattooed eyebrows still arching up at him. An arm formed out of the side of the mass, its long fingers made of former arms of individuals, their hands curled at the ends of each arm-finger like rakes.

Bill darted sideways, he needed to get to the door. A fat slab of flesh slapped down in front of him. Jesus, he’d made a monster. He back pedaled, turning. The warehouse had more exits. It was huge, surely he’d be able to avoid the other… what? What the hell had he created? At first it was quiet as he pushed open the door. The creature had been in Sector Three, it was going to take time for three times the number of people to merge and form an organized structure. He hoped. He just had to go slowly and keep his wits about him. To the left there was an emergency exit approximately forty feet from where he was, on the other side of the pulping machines. Stepping quietly and listening for any noise from Sector Three, Bill skirted the pulpers, noting that they were on stand-by, not switched to off, as they should have been in an emergency. He also noted that he’d never get the chance to file an incident report for it.

He had been such an idiot. What had make him think this would work? It was sick desperation and now he’d effectively killed over eighty people. How was he going to explain this? How were authorities going to stop them? And then what? Beads of sweat dripped between his shoulder blades as his wingtips ground against the cement floor. A grunt from Sector Two made him freeze. He was in Sector One, but the door was in Sector Two. He was almost past the third pulper, inching his way around fifteen foot high tank when a wet slap made him pause again. It was closer now, but it hadn’t reached the door, which stood in his line of sight. The glowing green EXIT sign had just become his own personal Jesus. He peeked around the pulper, another grunt and slurping noise, this one behind him. He froze. Was the office blob in here, too? It couldn’t be, could it? He looked back to see a long arm made of smaller bones and flesh all glued together reaching out for him. He turned to run as it raked down his back, ripping his shirt and leaving long lacerations on either side of his spine. The door was only fifteen feet away now. He took off.

Bill hit the concrete with a thud. His shoulder screamed in pain. He looked back, the creature was still slurping forward, slowly forming another long arm. It seemed to be a little more cumbersome than the office blob. Bill looked at the concrete. A puddle of water leaked from the pulper pipes.

“Goddamnit! I knew they were falsifying their inspection logs.” He’d slipped in the water, a leak that should have been reported. Now never would be. He scrambled to his feet, his shoulder screaming in pain.

“Biiiillll!” A chorus of heads screamed at him. His body hit the door bar and he felt it depress, the emergency alarm above him started blaring.

“Bill wait!” He turned instinctively, a head with long red braids trailing behind it came hurtling at him.

“Fuck!” He turned too late as the head latched on to his thigh with its teeth. From its neck ran a bloody chain of vertebrae at least twenty feet long. Bill balled up a fist but couldn’t punch the sweet middle-aged woman named Ellen, even though it was just her head. He shoved her forehead hard and she lost her grip. The head zipped back to the main body, like a retractible grappling hook. He was through the door and slamming it behind him in seconds, blood quickly staining his khakis.

He lurched into the road and threw up that morning’s coffee. Then he ran. The blob could easily open that door. He wasn’t sure if it could get through, but he’d seen that it had ways of reaching him and he wanted to be far away.

By the time he got to the front of the building, police were arriving. Covered in blood and limping, he tried to explain. But they only looked at each other sideways and put him in the back of a cruiser with an officer to keep an eye on him. The cops used his badge to enter the building, breaking protocol. Seconds later he watched them come running back out. He lay down on the back seat with tears in his eyes.

He’d only been trying to help.