Take Shape

     Gene looks through the box that he had used to clear off his desk. It's mostly empty despite his six years of service to the company; a coffee mug, a name plate, and a bunch of paper clip scraps. He takes out the mug and the name plate, putting them on the counter next to the box. He collects all the metal scraps in one corner, and dumps them into his hand. It's just a jumbled mess of broken paperclips, a few magnets and a screw. It had been something once, but now it's this mess. Gene lays the pieces out on the counter and tries to put everything back together.

     While employed, Gene worked at an office supply distributor. Much of his day involved going over order forms and maintaining spread sheets. His life was ruled by the spread sheets. He didn't mind much though. Gene took pride in his work. He enjoyed optimizing the organization of data and finding better ways to look at it. He came up for a snappy title for his position, Distribution Manager, and took pride in handing out business cards. It wasn't something to pick up chicks with, but he liked it.

     Due to the various mundane tasks he would tackle on a day to day basis, Gene took to unbending paper clips while he worked. It seemed to help him concentrate and no one really seemed to mind the broken paper clip parts strewn across his desk.

     While he was in a meeting during his first few months at the company, Gene had found four tiny magnetic spheres stuck to the chair he was sitting in. They served as a nice substitute for the paper clips during the meeting, which was of no interest to him. He separated them and let them pull themselves back together. He like the idea of a force that brought four separate things into one.

     Getting back to his desk, Gene was looking forward to jumping into a new document that measured client's orders per month against their proximity to new product distribution centers the company had just opened. He put the magnets down on his desk and reached for a paper clip. Before he could get to unbending the paper clip, he noticed something.

     The magnets had brought the scraps on his desk together. What was once a line of magnets and a bunch of broken paper clips was now a little metal tree. The broken pieces of paper clip extended from the magnetic trunk like branches.

     Gene played around with this, trying to allow it to take shape itself like it had before. He saw something in the mess and tried to fill in the blanks. He took a few more paperclip scraps and a screw that had fallen out of his chair, adding them into the mix. He was careful not to further alter the pieces themselves. If something was bent one way, he didn't change it to better suit his needs, he just let the existing pieces come together as they were.

     Eventually, the magnetic spheres took the shape of a back and spine, the screw sat on top, like a head. The magnets held the arms and legs to the rest of the body too. It was a little person. He looked up at Gene and seemed to wave. The magnetic nervous system allowed the man to move and be posed. Gene smiled and sat the man down next to his coffee mug.

     People didn't usually notice the magnet man, or if they did, they didn't mention it. He sat on the desk for six years. Gene would occasionally move the little man around the desk, changing his pose, but other than that, Gene didn't think too much about him either. He quickly became just as innocuous as any of the other trinkets people collected on their desks.

     When then time came for him to leave the company, Gene went quietly. He never liked to burn bridges and he felt that the experience had been valuable, so he turned in his ID badge and cleared off his desk. He wasn't happy about giving six years to a company only to be told “It was a really hard decision” and “There just isn't room in the budget.” But he was happy for the experience and tried to take it in stride. Cleaning off his desk, he realized that almost everything belonged to the company, the only things that were his were his coffee mug and his name plate. He packed these up in the box his boss had given him, and almost missed the little magnet man. Gene threw him in too.

     The box had been bouncing around quite a bit while Gene took it home, down stairs, up stairs, taking turns on his way back to his apartment that he wasn't sure he could afford anymore. He could here the nameplate as it bounced against the coffee mug making desperately trying to make a toast.

     So here Gene stood, looking down at these metal scraps. He lays them out on the counter next to the box, trying to piece the little man back together. The first time he did it, Gene wasn't quite sure how everything would take shape. He has an image in his mind now. That little man that had been sitting quietly on Gene's desk for six years. He tries to build the pieces back up, but the image of the little man sitting on his desk keeps coming back. He know what he wants this mess to be, and that makes it so much more difficult. The pieces just don't fit any more.