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A few coworkers take their breaks, and realize they have some missing information. |
| INT. OFFICE - DAY? Wage slaves toiling away in a typical American cubicle farm. We settle on one in particular, SMITH. As he types, his watch alarm goes off. ON WATCH: COUNTDOWN TIMER STARTS AT 15 MINUTES. SMITH stands. SMITH Time for my break. JOHNSON, SMITH's coworker, looks at his own watch as it goes off. JOHNSON Me too. The two walk off to... INT. BREAK ROOM - CONTINUOUS The break room, currently with one coworker sitting alone at a table, reading a magazine and eating a microwave burrito. SMITH and JOHNSON get their food from the fridge and sit. After several seconds, SMITH speaks. SMITH So, don't tell anyone, but I am going to start looking for a new job. JOHNSON (scoffs) Good luck. Better be careful not to let management find out. SMITH I don't care. I gotta get out of this place, even if I don't find another place first. JOHNSON How do you think you'll pay your bills if you get fired? SMITH I can make it work from savings until I find something new. My rent is only... He stops and furrows his brow in confusion. JOHNSON looks up. JOHNSON What? SMITH I don't remember how much my rent is. JOHNSON That seems like an important detail to remember. SMITH Yeah, it does. How much is your rent? JOHNSON thinks for a second. JOHNSON Hm. Come to think of it, I can't remember, either. Is your place nice? Maybe you can figure it out from that. SMITH I... I'm not sure. What about yours? JOHNSON You know, I can't actually picture my... apartment? House? SMITH I'm pretty sure I have an apartment... and a roommate. Maybe. The other coworker, WILLIAMS, has taken notice of the conversation. WILLIAMS I think maybe I live with my parents. SMITH Maybe I do, too. Maybe the person I thought was a roommate was my father. Or mother. I can't seem to remember what they look like. JONES, English, walks into the break room. JOHNSON Hey, do you remember the place you live? Or your parents? JONES stops. JONES I think I have two? Parents, not places that I live. SMITH Well yeah, everybody has two parents. JONES Right... right. But I mean, I think they're both still around. SMITH Well that's good. WILLIAMS Ok, doesn't it strike anyone else as strange that we don't remember these things? I mean, these are pretty major details about our lives. We're certainly going to have to know where we live when we get off work. SMITH When do we get off work? Everybody falls silent. JOHNSON Well, we get off work at the end of the day, right? Standard work day is nine to five, so... we get off work at five? WILLIAMS That seems reasonable. What time is it? SMITH looks at his watch. SMITH My watch just counts down until my break is over, then it counts down until my next break. WILLIAMS Mine, too. The others all make general noises of agreement. JONES Maybe there's a clock in here. They all look around, but there are no clocks in the break room. WILLIAMS The computers don't have clocks. What about cell phones? JONES I don't have one JOHNSON Neither do I. More agreement walla. WILLIAMS Ok, that is definitely weird. I mean, this is the 21st century, I think, and we all know that everybody in the 21st century has cell phones, especially young white collar workers in America. SMITH Are we in America? WILLIAMS I assume so. We're all speaking English, and we have American accents. JONES Not me. WILLIAMS That's true. But every office has one non-American worker. JONES Hey, I am an American citizen, I think! I was just born in another country, probably, although I can't remember which one. JOHNSON England, probably. Because of the accent. JONES That makes sense. SMITH So, we are probably in America, right? And we can probably safely assume it's a city, because that's where most white collar jobs are. JOHNSON Our accents, most of them, are fairly non-regional, so that's no help. JONES Let's check our pockets! Maybe we have something that will tell us who we are. SMITH Well, we know who we are, we just don't know where we live... or where we're from, or... any details about our lives. (beat) But we know our names. Right? Everybody falls silent. WILLIAMS Of course we do. My name is... More silence. JONES Let's check our pockets. They all empty their pockets onto the table. Each of them has exactly one thing: a company ID. WILLIAMS Mine says "Williams". That's all. No first name. JONES "Jones". No wonder I couldn't keep up with myself! SMITH "Smith". Aw come on, really?! JOHNSON (chuckled) "Johnson". BROWN walks in. SMITH Hey you! What's your name? BROWN fishes his company ID out of his pocket and looks at it. BROWN "Brown". WILLIAMS Don't you think it's weird that you had to look at your company ID to see what your name is? BROWN I don't know, man, I just want to eat my sandwich and get back to work. JOHNSON Well, where do you live? Where are you from? What's your parents' names? BROWN Look, you guys can have your conversation, just leave me in peace. BROWN goes to a separate table. WILLIAMS This doesn't make any sense. We don't have anything else in our pockets. No wallet, no gum. No driver's licenses. I mean, how did we get here without driver's licenses? JONES Maybe we took public transportation? WILLIAMS All of us? And we don't have any money. And no transit passes, or day passes. Even if we took public transport here, how are we going to get back? SMITH How can we answer that when we don't even know when we get off work? JOHNSON When did we start work? The group looks at each other. BROWN is increasingly annoyed, trying to ignore the conversation. WILLIAMS Guys, I don't remember ever being anywhere other than here, either at my desk, or here in the break room. JOHNSON I remember a supply closet once. I think. BROWN looks up at the mention of the supply closet. WILLIAMS Ok, I'm getting a little tired of all this "I think" business. All we have to go on is what we remember. In the absence of contradicting information, we should just assume that what we think our lives are like is the truth. They all express their agreement. JOHNSON Does anybody remember the start of the work day today? Or, the day they were hired? Nobody does. SMITH My earliest memory is of working here. And I'm sure that in that memory, I'd already been working here for a while. JONES And not just working here, but actively on the job... JOHNSON ...or on break. WILLIAMS Well, we can probably figure out how long we've worked here. I mean, we take a fifteen minute break every four hours, so... how many breaks have we taken? Everybody thinks. JOHNSON Four? SMITH You think so? JOHNSON Does that seem high? WILLIAMS Or low. JONES I was thinking two. SMITH It's definitely more than that. JOHNSON They all kind of... WILLIAMS Blend together. SMITH Brown! Do you know how many breaks we've taken? BROWN sighs. BROWN I told you, I don't want in on this. I just want to earn my paycheck. WILLIAMS eyebrows go up at this. WILLIAMS Do you even remember ever getting a paycheck? BROWN (beat) Just leave me out of it. WILLIAMS Do any of you guys remember getting paid? JOHNSON All in all, payroll disputes seem like a pretty petty grievance, in light of our general predicament. WILLIAMS No, think about it. If we've been working here, steadily, for as long as we can remember - for all practical purposes, for our entire lives - but have never received a paycheck... We've been working our whole lives for no pay. You know what that's called. SMITH Yeah, "America". (high-fives JOHNSON) WILLIAMS Guys... we're slaves. BROWN stands up and goes toward the fridge. BROWN You guys are going to get into trouble. WILLIAMS There you go! What kind of people get in trouble for asking questions? BROWN You're rocking the boat. Rocking the boat is how good employees get fired. SMITH Oh, God. JOHNSON What? SMITH I remember people. People who got fired. JONES You don't even remember how long you've been here. SMITH No, but I do. I remember people. I think. I'm sure. In the absence of contradicting information, I'm sure I remember people who got fired. Good people. People I liked. They were my friends. WILLIAMS What were their names? SMITH I... I don't... remember... JOHNSON Ok, so they got fired. So? SMITH It's like Williams said. If this is all we ever remember doing... if this job has been our whole life... what does it mean to be fired? Something drops noisily to the floor behind them. They look. BROWN has dropped a yogurt cup and sunk into a chair. WILLIAMS Brown? BROWN stares into space, stricken. SMITH What's wrong? BROWN I remember. I remember a girl. WILLIAMS What girl? Outside? BROWN No. Here. She worked here. A couple cubicles over from me. We started out giving each other little glances around the walls. We flirted in the break room. It escalated. We took to making out in supply closets. I think I loved her. I think... we loved each other. WILLIAMS You think? BROWN In the absence of contradictory information... we were in love. SMITH What was her name? BROWN I don't remember. JOHNSON What happened? BROWN She got fired. Management found out about our relationship, and fired her. JONES Why just her? Why not you? BROWN I told them. She didn't want to. She said she was pretty sure there were rules against office romances. But I said, maybe there isn't. We don't really know anything about this place. We noticed all the things you guys have noticed. I said, even if there is a policy, maybe there's a special exception. Maybe we could fill out a form. I said, we should be honest, and they would reward that. They would reward our honesty. She begged me and begged me not to tell them. I told her I wouldn't. I promised. But I did tell them. They didn't seem to care. I asked them not to let her know. They said it would be our secret. I went back to work, and she was called up. She never came back. They called me back in and said they fired her, but that I would be kept on. As a reward. For my honesty. Several seconds of solemn silence pass. BROWN (CONT'D) I forgot about that. Forgot all about it. Forgot it ever happened. Forgot she ever existed. I went back to work, knowing that if I kept my head down, didn't ask questions, and did my job, I would forget about her. And I did. Until now. So thanks. BROWN goes back to sit at his table in silence. JOHNSON Hey, I just realized. I think I'm gay. (beat) You guys are cool with that, right? The rest half-heartedly nod yes. WILLIAMS This is all very... Kafkaesque. SMITH What does that mean, "Kafkaesque"? I think I've heard it before. WILLIAMS It's... kind of like "Orwellian", but more... metaphysical and philosophical. Not as political. JONES Something bad is happening here. You guys all know that, right? We need to... do something. Find a way to stop it. JOHNSON There's just one problem with that. JONES What? JOHNSON Do you remember your last break? Do any of you? I don't. Who's to say we haven't had this conversation before? Maybe we have this exact conversation every break. JONES Well... maybe we do. But that doesn't make it any less true. We need to remember, and we need to fight. SMITH He's right. Everybody nods. WILLIAMS Ok, so, what ideas do we have? Maybe we can hack the company sys- WILLIAMS' watch alarm goes off. He looks at it. WILLIAMS (CONT'D) My break is over. I have to go back to work. WILLIAMS starts to leave. SMITH grabs his arm. SMITH Williams, don't go out there! We need to fight this! WILLIAMS My break is over. I have to go back to work. SMITH Ok... ok, Williams, go back to work. But whatever you were about to say? Try to hold that in your mind. Remember it. Hack the company. Remember that. Bring them down. Remember that. Remember this conversation. Remember us, Williams! SMITH lets WILLIAMS go. WILLIAMS goes back to the cubicle farm. JOHNSON Guys, I don't want that to happen to me. JONES None of us do. We can't forget. SMITH But what can we do? BROWN I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to get myself fired. SMITH Brown, don't. You know what... what that means. BROWN Maybe. Maybe not. We're just assuming. None of us knows anything. If getting fired just means losing a job, it means I can leave this goddamn building. I can find out what my life is really like. Find out who I am, where I live, where I'm from, who my family is. Or, failing that, I can start building those things. And I can find her. And if getting fired means... well, then it's still better than this. Whatever is on the other side, even if it's nothing, it can't be worse than this. But if leaving this job has even the slightest chance of letting me find her... I've got to take it. JOHNSON You don't even know her name. BROWN No... but I barely know my own name. Maybe "Brown" isn't even my real name. Maybe it's just a convenient placeholder. So, I'll think of a convenient placeholder for her, too. "Susan"... I'll call her "Susan". And I'm going to hold on to that. And I'm going to remember her face. And the way she felt. And I'm going to get fired. I'm leaving this place. I hope you guys... I hope you find your Susan. BROWN stands up and starts toward the break room door. JOHNSON Brown. Good luck. SMITH and JONES nod their concurrence. BROWN You, too. All of you. BROWN leaves. JONES Now what? I have no ideas. SMITH Take a number and get in line. JONES lights up. JONES Number! I think I remember a phone number! JOHNSON Outside?! JONES Possibly... yes! I'm sure of it! SMITH There's a phone out in the hall! JONES I'll go try it! JONES turns to leave. SMITH Don't lose yourself out there! JONES I won't. I'll keep you guys in my head. JONES leaves. SMITH and JOHNSON are left alone in the break room. JOHNSON You're not gay, are you? SMITH I don't think so. JOHNSON Too bad. You're very attractive. SMITH Thank you. Their watch alarms go off. BOTH My break is over. I have to go back to work. They both exit the break room. The camera follows them, then drifts away through the cubicles. FADE TO BLACK. |
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