This Life or the Next
Kosuke stood at the Egyptian precipice of a large pyramid, seemingly 100 meters up, with the moon rising in the backdrop while he held the Silver Bird Idol of a powerful, ancient god. His eyes wide in amazement of this find held unblinking for he knew that the moment was unlike any other. A discovery of this depth would change the world.
"Sir, you can't touch that!" a huffy security guard in a fitted suit bellowed as he hustled toward the visitor standing at the center of Trinity Museum's Horus display. "That's really weird and against the rules."
Snapped out of it, a wide-eyed Kosuke quickly placed the artifact back on its pedestal and stepped away, sincerely perplexed at his own actions. "Oh, uh. Sorry, dude. I really don't know what came over me. I think I'm having, like, an early mid-life crisis?"
"You know I'm not here to listen to your problems, right? That I'm just supposed to kick you out?"
Catching on, the 20-something young man in his over-worn brown jacket snapped a comprehending finger at the random guy. "Right!"
---
Stepping off the streetcar onto the grey, rained-soaked sidewalk of a busy downtown Toronto street, Kosuke entered a run-down office building and took the stairs up to the 6th floor where his workbench within Beckmore's Post-Podiums Incorporated held an open floor for constructionist workers.
"Hey, Kosuke," Delly, another 20-something young woman in overalls and messy brown hair targeted from her bench, sanding her own podium.
She watched Kosuke stumble around a messy pile of supplies to his own workbench across from hers, where he stood his podium from yesterday and began sanding as well. "I just did the strangest thing and picked up an artifact at the museum. It was like I was in a trance?"
"You're slipping, man," the keen woman observed. "You've been working here the longest out of everyone, carving the exact same design at the exact same pace for the exact same pay, that your sense of reality is warping just to get a taste of what they call deviation."
Kosuke threw her a disgusted look. "Uh, I'm supporting myself, paying off insanely inflated school debts and living my best life."
"Are you, though?" Delly shaded as she flipped her pedestal design around to show her custom look, elaborately decorated with glass jewelry and effortlessly carved flower pedals. "I've got commissions for this, baby!"
Kosuke watched in shock as she picked up the large work and moved off to its next stage of development. How is she allowed to make whatever she wants? Now, alone, Kosuke was forced to into the emptiness of his own existence, blankly staring ahead at nothing in utter boredom as he sanded his bland, uninspired pedestal design for the umpteenth time.
He tried to put together its most likely final home, under the poorly lit end of a cold, remote hallway of a rich mansion for an over-treasured artifact mostly forgotten until the next owner came along to just throw it all out.
As his gaze emanated outward, he suddenly registered some strange, loose electrical wiring connected to a small chip, on the floor, that was suddenly and discreetly picked up by one of the sketchy new guys. This was the third time he witnessed something out of the norm by he, Malcom, a raggedly-dressed man with a perpetually unlit cigar in his mouth.
Snapping to head-level, Kosuke was compelled beyond reason to stand and begin a clandestine visual investigation until an arm hooked his and pulled him into the tight confines of the maintenance closet. "Ah!"
---
"Hey, Scream-Factory, don't even think about whatever you think you think you're thinking," Pablo, another new guy ordered, showing his CSIS badge to Kosuke in one quick and smooth motion.
Kosuke's arm still-clutched by the undercover officer, he replied, "But I thought—?"
"That I was a pedestal worker?" he predicted. "Congratulations. You've fallen victim to my amazing acting. I was Hamlet in the Lin Manuel musical two years ago. But that means I couldn't magnet a hand turkey to an arm-length fridge. No. I'm not a 3-year pedestal technician graduate. We're investigating several tips for a potential citywide conspiracy and need incriminating evidence for the bureaucrats and comptrollers of high society."
The bland, blue collar sighed, deflated. "And you want me to stay out of it."
"Precisely. You want to serve your country? You want to make a difference in this world? Don't do anything and let the government do it all!"
Kosuke blinked, somewhat put-off.
---
But before he could go on, Kosuke was shoved out of the closet and into the walk-path of the general floor population. He was nicked by a larger passing man, shoulder-carrying a pedestal, without care or acknowledgement of Kosuke even as human debris.
"Yeah, I'm walking here!" Kosuke called out in a New York accent to a still unresponsive group of drone-workers before he gave up, turned and went back to his spot. There, he could see Pablo in the distance skulking around various workshop machines, seemingly foolish now knowing what was going on. "I always thought he was overly-caffinated or something?”
Pablo, unsatisfied with surveilled results thus far, left to pick up lunch, while Kosuke could then see target-Malcom opening a compartment on his pedestal to insert something. He knows about Pablo, Kosuke realized.
"This is the last time I trust the government! Until tax season, at least."
The sudden THUNK of Delly dropping her elaborate pedestal into the next workspace, threw the dazed man out of his world. "Trust the what? Are you revving up to something? Often, people rev up to something."
"Oh," Kosuke turned to her to think of a cover. "I was just saying, we should all do better in society as a whole. Generally-speaking, that is."
Delly tilted her stare at him in angled skepticism. "Yeah, sure you think that. You eat the same ham and cheese sandwich every day. You OCD your tool placement like a Tetris replay. Not to judge, but you couldn't lift a finger for the greater good if you were given a bonafide finger-lifting machine."
"First of all, you're describing hand muscles. Second, I meant, that new guy Malcom is planning something dangerous," Kosuke explained. "Also, I think I'm at that place where I want to be better-ish."
The woman joined Kosuke in eyeing the other man who put haste to fasten something within his pedestal: A clear violation of Pedestal Build Regulation 34, Sub-Section B, which stated no half-silo was to be outfitted by electronic component without the proper flags and approval stickers— None of which Malcom had.
"Huh. Maybe you're right," Delly observed. "Why are you just skulking about then? Someone could get hurt?"
Kosuke rebutted. "What about this being my chance to leave my little life-bubble and become a guy that does things?"
"Personal arcs don't have value against lives!" She pushed him out of their work zone into the traffic path, prompting him to slowly cross it toward Malcom. "Back-ups don't either but call me if you need me anyway."
---
Delly continued wiping her pedestal down as cover while intently watching Kosuke get closer and closer to his impromptu confrontation.
But Malcom knew exactly what was going on, having been prepared for any possible observers at any time. The older gentleman in torn clothing slowly stood with a fixed and steady glare at Kosuke as the young bubble approached.
"This can run down one of two ways, little man," Malcom's crusted voice coarsed. "You turn around and go back to your hippie drone-life, or we dance."
Kosuke raised a chin. "Oh, I can dance. I was in the performing arts for most of my young life. But at least there we learned terrible dancing has its consequences. You ever think about what you're doing here? Trying to hurt innocent prancers?"
"No one man or woman is innocent. We are all stained of life. One in a constant flux," he corroborated. "Chaos and force is the one true nature of it all."
When Pablo entered the floor, eating a sandwich, he was forced to stop right next to them in mid-mouth-chomp, with dripping ham and cheese from his face-orifice. "Oh, man! Kosuke, you ruined it!" he began before noticing his mess, "And my lunch!"
"Chaos," affirmed Malcom at the sight of the meal shambles.
Kosuke turned Malcom's modified pedestal around to inspect an open compartment. Inside, there were no electronics, but rather, a lock of sand. "What is this?"
"Did you think I was making some peasant bomb?" Malcom snarked as he gestured to his electric carving blade, plugged into the wall. A compartment on it was open, in repair. "We have shit equipment here that needs fixing every day. Judging by the quality of your work, you know that more than any of us."
Pablo caught the rest of his dripping food as the satisfaction of finishing his mouth-full concerted with the disappointment of an anti-climax. "That means the CSIS wasted months on a bogus tip. Again!"
"Revealing yourself just now was your twelfth mistake," Malcom added.
But Kosuke's eyes were locked, perpetually onto the carvings administered by said stone-cutting tool. "A dog with a long neck? Is that the Egyptian anti-god, Set?"
Malcom took the unlit cigar out of his mouth and used his still occupied hand to grip the pedestal for himself. "The giver of death. The bringer of madness. His followers will wrought untold disorder upon this world."
"You made a puzzle?" the young man was drawn to the now fascinating work, which replicated Egyptian carvings more perfectly than he'd ever seen in any fake. He tugged back. "These symbols show Set seeking and taking power, with several gods below him as avenues to that power."
The crusty man used both hands on the pedestal now to struggle it else-wise. "It's not the time for Him yet."
"So, if I were to move this, the symbol for the god Osiris, who was murdered by Set himself, you actually think it would do something?" Kosuke bargained, with no idea.
Pablo's eyes wandered as the air in the room strangely began to animate dust particles off the floor in some kind of divine anticipation. "What's all this tension? Unwarranted things need to stay unwarranted."
"This took me months of spiritual infusion and is meant to protect something far greater!" gritted a desperate Malcom as he pulled back even more, unintentionally assisting Kosuke's grip on the protruding Osiris hieroglyph in a way that moved it along a stone groove to align under Set.
Delly dropped her cleaning rag in awe, along with everyone else when all the window shutters suddenly exploded open, inwards, rocketing a loud force of constant desert sand through and into the workplace! Paint cans, construction tools, and cleaning supplies blew over; the noise disrupting the entire floor culture.
"You toy with my work and forces beyond your understanding!" Malcom squalled in frustration as he took in the premature set-off in horror. "No one should enter a world they are not prepared for!"
Anarchic African sand spindled and tornadoed itself throughout, purging the majority of everyone's visibility, with but a few glimpsing the maddening formations of sand-sculpted, long-necked, dog-like animal variations upon everyone's pedestal. The sight beheld an air of doom and upset.
"Is this an arrestable offense?" Pablo sputtered as the foreign, divine force began to die down, leaving sand collecting at everyone's feet— including his unrecoverable lunch item. "Arrestable," he concluded.
Kosuke dropped his arm from his wide-eyed, extended shock at what he was sure transpired and was not a hallucination. Some kind of celestial power? But Set was killed by Annubis?
"Ugggh!" Malcom took in his now wiped carvings upon his now flat-sided pedestal. A result of an execution of magics. "That was supposed to work in concert with the burial chamber! It's going to take me months to get this back on!"
But Charles Beckmore, the business owner and manager was already standing next to them, with no forewarning of approach. "Uh, you're both fired. So, pretty much, no. You're not going to take any length of time to anything."
"Hah!" Pablo chortled before realizing Beckmore was also eye-piercing firing-daggers at him as well. "Perhaps the unwarranted is warranted after all."
---
Kosuke walked over to his pedestal, rejoining a similarly wide-eyed Delly. The now-jobless Egyptian cryptographer homed in on the sand sculpture upon his primeval work. He'd never seen anything actually atop his pedestals before, especially something so exquisite and haunting.
"That was not a have-your-backable paradigm," Delly realized.
Kosuke shook his head in continued reverie of the horrid, dog-shaped prize before him. "I spent my whole life in a sheltered nothing. Whatever 'world' Malcom was regurgitating should be entered, whether you're ready for it or not. Because that's the world."
"I literally said that to you ten minutes ago. Well, at least no one died," the woman added as she curiously poked the sculpture on her pedestal until it collapsed into a pile of sand. "And neither will you. You'll get back on your feet, and by the next time you see me, I'll be running this joint."
The man picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder, whilst Pablo escorted Malcom out of the building in the background. "Thanks. There's someone I need to find, who can speak to this kind of stuff. She needs to be made aware of what might be coming."
"It's chaos and madness out there in the real world," Delly smirked. "Be careful."
Kosuke arched half a brow. "Figured you'd appreciate I was finally lifting that finger." They shared a look and the christened adventurer left the building to seek out the unknown.