BOXES - a 20-minute prose exercise

Here’s my 20-minute prose exercise for today. If you’d like to share yours, you can email me here. I’m working on getting a place to share them publicly (anonymously) on here if that’s something you’d like. If not, I’m happy to provide private feedback via email.

Not sure where to start? Read about the project here.

BOXES

Little boxes, all standing in a row. That old song was running through my head again. I looked over at Jeremy. He had his headphones in. What had he said? What did he say about the boxes?

The whistle blew, and we all set whatever boxes we had in our hands down on the conveyor belt. I looked up at the giant wall clock that overlooked our line. It was eight o’clock. Time to go home.

“Say, Jeremy,” I turned to face him and ask him about the boxes, but he’d already gone.

I thought about the boxes again on my ride home.

He said something about them, but I can’t recall. I rubbed the back of my neck with one hand and held on to the overhead strap with the other. The train was slowing down. Almost home.

I couldn’t sleep that night. My mind raced as it tried to remember the words that Jeremy had said to me the day before.

Finally, my brain lit up like a Christmas tree. That’s it, I thought. It has to be.

The next day, as we assumed our positions on the line, I looked over at Jeremy. “I remembered what you said about the boxes.”

He raised an eyebrow but didn’t look at me. “Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“What did I say?” there was no emotion in his voice.

“You told me that the reason they still need us to move the boxes is because the robots are less efficient. They can’t react like you or I would if something were to go wrong. Because we’re human, and humans act on instinct and emotion and not just pre-programmed rationality alone.”

Jeremy was silent as he put on his sickly, yellow-green gloves. “I said that?” he asked at last.

“Pretty sure it was you.” I laughed. “It must be. You’re the only person I talk to regular-like.”

Jeremy nodded. “Sure.”

“You know what else you said?” I continued, exuberant. “You said how funny it was that we move boxes inside of a big concrete box. We drive home in a box to then sleep and eat in a box. It’s like we’re in a world of boxes.”

“Taleb said that.”

“What? I asked.

“He’s a writer. He said that. Not me.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Well, anyway, you got the quote wrong.” Jeremy’s tone turned short and sour.

“Jeez,” I said. “Sorry.” Just trying to make the day worth living, I thought.

He turned and looked at me like he’d heard my thoughts.

The conveyor belt started up and the robots started dumping the shipping containers. Each identical brown box came down the line and we sorted them. One by one, as efficiently and as swiftly as we could.

The machines whirred and roared. It would be too loud to talk anymore.

That night, I asked Eye to pull up the quote Jeremy said I misremembered. She flashed the author Nassim Taleb and his works across my contact lens. I had the quote now, and I wouldn’t forget.

I couldn’t wait to tell Jeremy.

The next day, as soon as he joined me on the line, I started in:

                  “They are born, then put in a box. They go home to live in a box. They study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called “work” in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box. They drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they go to the gym in a box to sit in a box. They talk about thinking “outside the box,” and when they die they are put in a box. All boxes. Euclidian, geometrically smooth boxes.”

Jeremy’s eyes widened and he turned to face me.

“You were right,” I told him. “I hadn’t remembered the full quote.”

Tears welled in Jeremy’s eyes. “What have you done?”

Confused, I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”

He grabbed me by the arms and shook me. “What the hell have you done?” He was yelling now.

“I-I was just,” I stammered as he pushed me onto the conveyor belt.

“You ruined it. Now, they’re coming. They’re coming to shut us both up.”

Armed robots swarmed the line and opened fire on us. The rounds hit Jeremy with such accuracy as to rival any sharpshooter of yesteryear.

“Jeremy!” I cried out.

He had blocked the bullets, his body absorbed them.

“I told you,” he struggled to say, “I told you to forget it. No free thought.”

As we rode the conveyor belt, Jeremy’s corpse was stripped from me and sent down one sorting chute, and soon I another. Because in a world full of boxes, even the damned are labeled and put in their lane, just like everyone else.