The office went to hot desking in the spring, and the memo explained that no employee would own a surface anymore. She arrived early on Monday, claimed the desk beside the window, wiped it down, and placed a succulent beside her laptop. By ten the plant was gone. By lunch, a steaming mug of tea had appeared beside the keyboard along with a sticky note in unfamiliar handwriting asking that she leave everything as she found it.
She assumed another employee had forgotten to log out of the booking system, but the desk showed as available every day. Its previous occupants left traces anyway: a chewed pen, a cardigan smelling faintly of woodsmoke, a photograph turned face down, handwritten notes about meetings nobody remembered attending. Whenever she moved something, it returned the following morning. Whenever she added something of her own, it disappeared.
She began staying late to catch whoever was using it. At seven, after the floor emptied and the lights dimmed, the monitor woke by itself. Her inbox opened. Draft replies appeared to messages she had not answered, written in her voice but better: warmer where she was impatient, firmer where she usually apologized. Her calendar rearranged itself into a schedule that eliminated pointless meetings and added blocks labeled TRANSITION.
Facilities had no record of the desk’s manufacture. Human Resources had something stranger: a list of employees assigned there over twelve years, every one of whom had left the company without resignation paperwork. Their personnel files remained active. Their salaries continued to be processed. Performance reviews appeared annually, all excellent.
On Friday, the desk returned her succulent. It had doubled in size.
The following Monday, the booking system assigned her permanently to the window seat. Her security badge stopped opening any other floor. Colleagues began addressing emails to a slightly different version of her name, and nobody reacted when she corrected them.
By Wednesday, her locker had been emptied.
By Thursday, a new employee sat at the desk across from hers and asked whether anyone had been using the window seat.
She tried to answer.
The desk answered first, sending an email from her account that welcomed the newcomer to the team and explained that nobody owned a surface anymore.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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