Gleek and the Hair Helmet
By Joseph R. Schmidt
Science Fiction Short Story
4200 words
On an industrious little planet called Vadorx, under a class-one office megaplex, and in a darkly lit workshop, Gleek toiled alone in his workbench. He checked his tools, straightening them into even columns and rows. He checked his drawings, removed a smudge, and checked his tools again. Then he carefully selected the tool he needed, retrieving it in his three digits precisely as instructed by the tool vendor, and held it up to the device that loomed suspended before him with an open panel.
Too risky.
But it must be done.
He cautiously inserted the tip into the guts of the device, clicked the button, counted to the prescribed number, and then retracted the tool. He breathed and returned the tool to its original location. It rolled a little to its left, so he straightened that up into the column. He stopped for a moment, realizing how absurd he must look, thinking about what the others must think of him, likely nothing good. Would he ever shrug this feeling of incompleteness, this absurdity, his obsessiveness? He shook his head and continued. He checked his drawings, and he checked his tools, again. Then, retrieving a sanitary wipe, he scrubbed his three green digits.
This work tired him. Project schedules were uncompromising, and he could not afford to make an error. It was very important to his company, to his world even.
Gleek tilted his head way to the side and ran his three fingers through his few black strands. He then rubbed his ears, or at least the little slits at the pointed ends of his oblong head. Because of the disproportion of their heads to the rest of them, Vadorxians spent an absurdly large chunk of their economy on their vanity. In fact, a generous research and development budget provided Gleek his living. Household and personal care retail merchandise comprised roughly seventy-two and thirteen--forty-seconds percent of their gross global product.
Gleek took pause while he considered, habitually retrieving his eye platelet buffing resin and pocket-sized buffer from his--well, his pocket. He went to work polishing his triangular eye platelets, being sure to achieve a glossy, black sheen and to touch up the corners. He knew he must do his part, to drive the economy by consuming those critical personal care products. And he did it with pride.
It had been a rough morning, but Gleek felt confident that his last bit of work, that risky but necessary maneuver (and really the only thing he had done all morning), had truly been progress. He studied his prints and scanned the readouts. He flipped through his schedule, marking the accomplished task as completed in all of the locations in which he had recorded it, such as the main task list, the back-up task list, and the tertiary cross-check tracking list, amongst others.
He was about to mark his diagrams, the ones that graphically represented the electro-mechanical design and assembly task that had been completed to date, when a wrap at his workshop door nearly caused him to mar his prints. He stopped, froze really, and then placed his diagram marking tool back into its rightful position in the column-row tool array. He looked up.
Bellita, his technology design manager stood in the door. She was a Vadorx, of course, but the females had a longer torso, so she stood a head taller than he, which for a Vadorx is saying a lot.
She didn’t look up from her handheld Managerial Accountability Unit. “Gleek,” she said, “I’ve been reviewing your project schedule report from last week and…I’m concerned.”
“Yes, ma’am. I am making great progress. Why this morning I managed to--”
“Gleek, at your rate, you won’t make schedule. The Electromagnetic Impulse Hair Curling Helmet must be ready for testing next week if we are going to get it to market by the end of next quarter. If you don’t finish it, we’ll all be fired.”
“Yes. But it is important to get it right, too. One stray impulse and it’ll fry your head open. Sell that on the mass market!”
“Gleek. I don’t have time for this. I’m assigning Zonto to assist.”
“But you can’t!” Not Zonto!
“I think the two of you will work great together and besides, he will be a great subject for your internal testing.”
Zonto. Careless Zonto. Zonto the slick. Zonto the dating machine. Zonto the Vadorx with the marvelous hair! Not Zonto! “I must protest.”
“Howdy partner,” said Zonto as he strutted into Gleek’s workshop. “I haven’t seen you up on floor three-hundred seventy-four in a long time.”
There he was, in Gleek’s workshop, that hair slicked back with that expensive pomade, not the stuff off the shelf in the subway (Gleek had but a few strands that never sat right on his head). There he was with his shiny eyes, polished with Endothermic Buffing Resin; a big blue belt buckle; and marvelously cleft chin.
Bellita poked at her Managerial Accountability Unit. “I have briefed Zonto on the project and your status, so I’ll leave you two to get to work.”
“You got it Boss,” said Zonto, smiling finely and looking down his nose if he had one. “You don’t worry about a thing, sugar.”
And Bellita smiled back, not a harmless little grin and not a toothy mirthful thing, but a disturbingly knowing sort of grin that made Gleek feel as though he were intruding on something.
She left, and Zonto grabbed a tool from Gleek’s array. “So let’s get to work buddy.” Zonto flipped that tool, just a little slotted, helical, torsional-binding-cylinder remover-inserter, into the air, caught it with the business end, and dropped it alongside the rest. “I don’t know what you do all day. You’re way behind. I’ll work on the Automatic Head Sealer. You finish up the Follicle Agitation Collector.”
Gleek set about arranging his tools. “I have a list here that you can check off when you complete a task. And as you see, I have a specific place for each tool, unless you have your own. In fact, that would be better.”
“Hey, I’ll just use yours, they’re better than mine.”
They went to work. Mostly Zonto worked here and there randomly, while Gleek retraced everything he did to the helmet device, looking for careless mistakes. He found them and corrected them.
“Well, look at the time,” said Zonto, “Listen, I have a fifteen minute coffee break date.”
Gleek ran his three fingers over his ear slot and blinked a few times. “You can do that?”
“So, I might be a little late. But don’t you worry none, buddy.”
Gleek intended to point out that he was not his buddy, when Zonto promptly strutted out of the dimly lit workshop.
For the next little while, Gleek went over all the work that Zonto had performed. Zonto was too quick to be careful and too casual to be concerned, so Gleek did not trust a thing that the smooth-talker did. He did find a few errors in just that little while. This infuriated Gleek. That wicked, terrible Vadorx had jeopardized all of his careful planning, design, and fabrication in just one morning.
But he envied Zonto too. Gleek thought Zonto was a good-looking fellow whose words just seemed to roll. He always had something to say. Gleek wanted just a little bit of what he had, whatever that was.
He reflected for a moment. Something or someone a long time ago had driven him to his seclusion, his isolation; he had just forgotten who or what. He understood how strangely he acted, how overly obsessed he was about details. Maybe he was just bored and strove for the absolute, that viscously unobtainable ideal, the perfect perfection.
“Gleek.”
From his doorway, Bellita’s voice startled him, and he marred one of his drawings.
“Have you seen Zonto?”
“He’s at a fifteen-minute coffee break date.”
“You can do that?” She frowned deeply.
Gleek shrugged his rounded shoulders (or rather that place from which his arms attached to his bulbous torso).
She came into his workshop and stood next to him. He was sitting so she towered over him even more. He looked up into her shiny black eyes. They narrowed. “I want you to go find him,” she said, evenly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Gleek left to find Zonto. It was a strange errand. He found Zonto after a short while. Gleek watched in amazement as the smooth talker arranged a lunch date. And after that it took much longer to pry him away. Gleek thought if only he could manage a portion of what Zonto did, things in his life would become a little more interesting.
They returned to Gleek’s workshop.
Gleek went to work. Zonto was uncharacteristically cool and quiet. Good, thought Gleek. He spent his time running through his tertiary crosscheck, straightening his tools, and wiping them down whenever Zonto slammed them carelessly on his workbench. He had even placed his passcard and a little black book on the bench, but Gleek couldn’t muster the strength to remove the filthy items.
After a little while Bellita returned. “I have a requisition,” she said to Zonto and held out her Managerial Accountability Unit. “Sign here.”
Zonto did. That was odd to Gleek, because Bellita, as his boss, could have signed anything that Zonto could sign. He wondered why she had run all the way down from the three-hundred seventy-fourth floor.
There sat Zonto. Gleek envied him. He envied Zonto’s smooth talk, his charisma. Somehow Zonto just seemed to have it all.
“Do you have any family at home?” Gleek asked.
“Me? I’m all by myself and glad about it.”
“You must have a lot of friends.”
Zonto patted his little black book. “Don’t you know it, and they’re all ladies.” Then he went back to work.
“Brother? Sister? Parents?”
“Nope,” Zonto said without looking up. “How about you?” Zonto asked.
“Not really.”
“Well what do you know partner. We’re a lot alike.”
Gleek tried not to look offended but he thought he might have failed. “My work is my life,” he proudly said. That statement had never before ringed falsely, not until just then.
“That sucks,” Zonto said.
Gleek sat for a moment, hurt, but all he could see was Zonto’s full head of hair because his colleague had started back to work again. And then Gleek’s tools required the appropriate attention.
Gleek wanted to check a few last modules, but Zonto strapped on the Electromagnetic Impulse Hair Curling Helmet prototype.
“It’s done Gleek. Hit the button. Make my hair curl, baby.”
“Are you joking? I must check the last modules.”
“It’s all done. It’s been finished for a while. Come on, hit the button.”
“No. Let’s use Harry first.” Harry was the prototype test dummy, that had a full head of hair. “Let’s load those last modules in the simulator.” He did, and then started reviewing the functions on a little display.
“Gleek boy. I say Gleek there boy. Punch that button. Let’s go. I got a lunch break date, and I can’t stay late tonight.”
Gleek tried to ignore him, a hard thing to do. “Did you modify the safety module?”
“What? No. I got two minutes and it’s lunch time.”
“Because…wait. What’s this?” Someone had modified the safety module today.
“Anyone ever point out that you’re lousy at what you do?”
Gleek’s eye twitched. According to Gleek’s estimation, nothing good would happen to Zonto if he hit the start button. Sure, the hair helmet was supposed to curl his thick hair into fine loops and also leave it shiny and full of body, but Gleek thought the current set-up would actually be dangerous.
“Look. Look. I’m touching your tools,” Zonto said in falsetto. “I’m touching them. Look. I dropped this one on the floor. Oh-no! What are you going to do?”
Gleek stared at the button and then at Zonto under the helmet.
“Common Gleek. If I could reach it, I’d do it myself. Don’t you have any confidence in your work. What’s the worst that could happen. Live a little baby.”
Gleek’s eye twitched a few more times. He reached for the button but hesitated, hand hovering. This was too dangerous. Too much risk. He must recheck the module, run the simulator, and then do all it again to be sure.
“If you had hair, you could test it yourself.”
Somehow, Gleek’s three-fingered hand found the button. He felt his circulatory system become overly pressurized. He heard the whoosh of the vacuum as the helmet sealed to Zonto’s head.
The helmet hummed. That was normal. Zonto nodded and smiled in self-satisfaction.
“Ok. Gleek you can let go now.”
Gleek watched Zonto’s self-satisfied amusement fade. And Gleek grinned. He wanted to show Zonto that he could let go. Now he was living dangerously, taking uncalculated risks, brushing his saturated compulsions away. As he held down the button, those forgotten feelings rushed him.
“You did great there buddy. You can let go now.”
Gleek’s eye twitched. Just a little longer. Just a little more worry for him. Zonto’s face drained more. There. That was enough. Gleek removed his hand from the button. The helmet kept on humming. The lights dimmed. Gleek hit the emergency stop button. The lights dimmed more. He hit it again and again.
It wouldn’t stop.
Gleek stood and whimpered.
Zonto’s face strained with worry. “Turn it off. Turn it off. Come on now. Turn it off! Hit the main switch.”
Gleek fumbled around for the main switch on the wall. He shrieked a little, just a short burst. He had never ever needed to hit the main switch. When he looked back, he saw Zonto’s head vibrating violently, and Zonto, with his (short) arms, was trying to pry the helmet off, but the vacuum seal could not be broken. Gleek shrieked a little more.
With a bright flash, Gleek was thrown to the floor, and the lights went out.
In a few moments the lights returned. He stood and looked across his workbench to where Zonto sat, but he sat there no more. Gleek scrambled around the workbench (which is in fact, many steps for the short spindly legs of a Vadorx). Zonto was not on the floor. A haze filled the room. Gleek looked up into the haze and then the sprinklers kicked on, showering him and his workshop from above.
Zonto had been vaporized.
#
Somewhere on the three-hundred-seventy-fourth floor, Gleek sat in Bellita’s office, closest to the door, and still wet from the sprinklers. It was a nice office. It even had a view, which Gleek could not bring himself to enjoy without puking. It was bad enough that he could feel the whole building move back and forth in the wind.
“It so unlike you to have such a mishap,” Bellita said. “Maybe I pushed you too hard.”
“No, ma’am,” said Gleek. “I must have made a mistake in one of the modules. Are you sure you haven’t heard from Zonto.” He smiled weakly. “He was a great help.”
“No one saw him at lunch,” Bellita said. She drummed her fingers absently on her Managerial Accountability Unit. “It seems he stood up his lunch date.”
Gleek felt relieved and quite sick from guilt all at once. “When you see him, tell him I’m sorry I ruined the prototype.”
“Oh. It’s not ruined. Actually, maintenance will have your lab ready by tomorrow. Go home and rest. I’ll tell Zonto all about it when I see him.”
“Ok. But my tools. And drawings.”
“Don’t worry so much, Gleek. Go home.”
#
Gleek did go home. After a short ride in the subway and several sanitary wipes, he arrived at his basement apartment. He went about his nightly routine, completed it well ahead of schedule, and then sat on his plastic covered couch.
Poor Zonto. Had Gleek waited and checked all of the modules, his colleague would not have been vaporized. And then finally he came to terms with his own actions. He had covered it up and lied about Zonto. He had told Bellita that Zonto had gone on a lunch date.
Gleek hung his head (This is why their necks are so thick).
But he had to go to work in the morning. He couldn’t let on that something was wrong. It was too late for that now. He found his briefcase; it was where he left it, the same place where he always left it. He opened it. Inside, in a clear bag, he found Zonto’s passcard and his little black book. It was all so sketchy with the sprinklers and the firefighters (they had huge helmets) and the medics and the maintenance and then the tube ride up to the three-hundred seventy-fourth floor. He had forgotten he took them. Now he had to get them out of his briefcase.
It took him twenty minutes until he finally had them on the coffee table and out of the bag. They were filthy, so he sprayed them with disinfectant. What was he to do with them? That thought process consumed the better part of an hour, but at the end of it and through three lists of options, he decide that he should return the book to Zonto’s apartment, using the passkey to gain access. He also decided that this risky endeavor should take place in the cover of darkness. He slipped the items back into the plastic bag, back into his brief case, and then waited until dark, sitting on his plastic covered couch and staring helplessly at his problem while trying to calm his hiccups.
Then he became angry with himself. He should have refused to hit the button. He should have run all of his tests. But at the same time he remembered that moment, the exhilaration, the recklessness, his untamed self that he had only forgotten about. Then he scolded himself again, and repeated that cycle until dark.
#
Zonto lived in a penthouse apartment a few blocks around the corner. It was very high. He slipped the passkey into the tube controls. As he rode the tube to the top, Gleek breathed shallowly, hung onto the handrail until his green knuckles paled, and kept himself from vomiting. The door opened to the restricted floor. He checked the hall and then scrambled quickly along, trying several doors until he found Zonto’s, which opened with a disco beat and a sly ‘Welcome to my pad. Clothing optional’ message.
Gleek slipped in and made certain the door closed behind him. The lights came on dimly, and a slow melody played somewhere in the background.
Just leave the items on the table and get out; that was all he had to do. He could almost feel the building sway in the wind.
He stepped tentatively past the entryway and into the living room. He felt a deep shag under his feet.
Just leave them and get out.
The music seemed to sooth him; it never had before. He found the couch, not covered but exposed like naked flesh.
He slapped his hand to his mouth to stifle a little screech. What was he thinking? There he stood in his dead colleague’s apartment thinking of nakedness, a colleague he had probably killed. Just get out. Too risky, too dangerous.
He sat on the couch and rested his weariness. He set his briefcase on the coffee table, but had to move several electronic wafer display publications in order to do that. Consequently he dumped several on the rust-colored shag. He picked them up, being polite the way his mother, God bless her soul, had taught him, but she would not have approved at how long he lingered, how long he held those publications in his shaking hands before he stacked them neatly back on the table.
He picked up the baggy that held the black book and then dumped it callously onto the table before him. He slapped the pass card down beside it. That was that.
That was that; it had to be it. He was finished, free to go. Back to his life, back to work tomorrow, back to complete the final stages of the Electromagnetic Impulse Hair Curling Helmet, a very important product for his company and the economy of the world.
He looked up to see his near baldness reflected back at him from the grid of mirrors attached to the ceiling.
#
Most of the numbers in the black book had symbols next to them and it took Gleek a while to decode them. This was no more than a list and that his specialty.
He swayed to the seven-nine swing beat (a perfect rhythm that allowed the Vadorx to bob their enormous heads). Certainly he felt invigorated. Did he feel the powerful presence of Zonto himself surging through his—well--his circulatory system. Not likely, he decided. Yet the way the little black book called to him, he could not simply leave it the alone.
He called his first selection, but no one answered.
He called his second selection, and he reached his target. He tried to mimic that smooth-talker. “This is Zonto baby,” he said.
She replied, and a tricky conversation ensued where Gleek convinced her he was Zonto but had a bit of a chest cold from which he was recovering. She bought it and then suggested that they meet in an hour at the Elliptical Spheroid, a discotheque about which he had only overheard bodacious rumors.
He left his briefcase, grabbed the black book, and the passcard, but first he raided Zonto’s massive and impressive collection of personal care items. When he did not find an Epidermal Cranium Glazer, he gave up and proceeded to the discotheque.
Gleek, after much internal self-badgering and several sanitary wipes, entered the Elliptical Spheroid. He wasn’t sure what to do but the guy at the door swiped his--Zonto’s--passcard. Then, over the rumbling bass and seven-nine swing beat, he informed Gleek of his dating code and handed him a card. Gleek stood for a moment, and then the guy explained that he was to go to the corresponding table and wait for his date while looking cool.
Gleek went to his table.
Before long, a young Vadorx woman approached the table, stopped, looked at Gleek, and then checked her card. She looked at Gleek again, who smiled coolly. She walked away.
He wandered the streets outside the discotheque. How could he be so foolish? Could he really expect to be as sly as Zonto had been? But he couldn’t just give up and face his workshop in the morning. He stopped at a comm booth, where he paged through the black book. He checked all the symbols. He found one he hadn’t seen before, next to a name: Carmina. To him, the symbol and the name projected a positive aura.
He called. She answered. He worked at it, calling himself Zonto and saying ‘baby’ and ‘partner’ and all of those little catch words which he thought had made Zonto such a smooth talker. She accepted his invitation, so he rushed back to the Elliptical Spheroid.
Gleek received his table assignment and card. He wandered about the disco looking for the table, until he heard his name and felt a tug on his spindly arm.
He spun around.
“Gleek, what are you doing here?”
He gasped. He almost shrieked. “Bellita!”
“Sit down.” She pulled him into a chair.
“This isn’t my table.” Then he looked at his card, nearly shrieking again. “It is my table.”
“I really didn’t expect to see you here,” Bellita said. Gleek felt Bellita’s hand on his arm. It calmed him. She looked around quickly. “No one knows we’re here.”
She knows. She must know. She must have suspected all along. He said, “But Carmina was in Zonto’s book. Are you Carmina? You are Carmina. But Zonto--”
“I don’t think we should talk about him. He’s not your problem anymore. He signed his resignation this morning.”
“We shouldn’t be fraternizing,” Gleek said. “The company will fire us both.”
“I’ve transferred you out of my department. The Cranial Epidermal Translucence Glazer needs a good detail oriented designer for its final stages.”
He was sure she knew he killed Zonto. She was so calm. “But what about the Helmet?” he asked. “The prototype is destroyed. I’ll have to start all over.”
“Gleek. Listen to me.” She grabbed his other arm. “I swapped out the prototype this morning when you were looking for…for him. It’s fine. It has worked fine for three weeks. You finished it, and I have it in my office.”
The requisition that morning, it must have been Zonto’s resignation, more like a death warrant. She killed him. He figured she planned it all. Vaporized. Gone. No relatives or friends to miss him. What sort of dangerous woman was she? He wanted to wipe off his arms and be rid of her. Too reckless, too uncomfortable. He wanted to go home and sit on his plastic covered couch. He wanted to straighten his tools into neat columns and rows.
Or did he?
He swayed to the seven-nine swing beat. He liked the way the sparkling disco ball reflected in her highly polished eyes.
Gleek stood suddenly. “Would you like to dance?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
--The End--