With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think.[1]
It had been two years since the company had their last Holiday celebration. People hung silvery strands of tinsel from the short, stunted gray walls of their cubicles, from these grassy, shiny ropes they suspended red and white candy canes. When their computer monitors would idle too long it would go black and transition to a dancing Santa or eight tiny reindeer. some of the more religious had tiny mangers staring from the tops of file cabinets, or perched with pride on the top of their in basket.
In the world at large strains of SARS-Cov-2, were evolving and the race to develop preventative measures was a breakneck race against time, careering through treacherous paths of civilian resistance and state governments bringing lawsuits battling federal vaccine mandates. Meanwhile, the novel coronavirus watched with an ancient and practiced patience. It had been making small assaults into humanity for as long as there had been a humanity. Now, mankind was able to carry it everywhere, in hours, and there was a battle between people about whether it was real, or imagined, or a tool of propaganda, there were arguments about prophylactic measures and treatments, constant accusations and denial. It was a storm of intolerance and opportunity.
But, in the company it was all smiles and gaiety. Human Resources gave its blessing to an ugly sweater party and the email went out. Fliers were hung around the building, it was an act of camaraderie and solidarity, defiance and determination.
It was a memory of times long gone, and a hope for a better future. Customer service staff busied itself hanging garland, and tinsel, and silver and gold pipe cleaners, little silhouettes of smiling snowmen and jolly elves, someone found a tree and dragged it into the office suites. Despite the walls and hallways and rows of fluorescent lights the glare from the strings of blinking lights intruded into every corner. Christmas music drifted through the entire building, syncing with the whir of the machinery of modern office production, copiers, printers and telephones seemed to fall into rhythm with Silent Night, White Christmas, everything was in tune, following the cadence of a solemn, sacred musical ritual.
Indeed, the magic crept into everything. Everybody wore Santa hats, reindeer horns, bows and ribbons. Ugly sweaters were the uniform, and the filament that tied everyone together, swaying and moving in unison.
A voice, or a laugh would rise, briefly above the music and the serenity was fractured, cracks thundered across the veneer of holiday joy. People glared in the direction from which they knew the intrusion came. Everybody looked in different directions. Each had a suspect in mind. They had all the evidence they needed to convict the co-worker of their choice.
“Damn that guy.” Was the silent curse from everybody about somebody else, and they were all wrong. It wasn’t a coworker, or visiting salesperson, or the man who came to repair the elevator, or the custodian. It was just an echo from the old days, or future days, or possibly the present. It was a sound that carries across time and space, a noise that lives on its own, outside of humanity, outside of thought.
Finally the time for the party arrived. Everybody assembled in the break room, plastic cups of bubbling soft drinks with ice, plates with Queso dip and tortilla chips. Groups of gaudily dressed associates milled around tables filled with platters heaped with frosted sugar cookies, and potato chips drizzled with milk chocolate, aluminum tubs filled with barbecued pork and sandwich buns, plastic containers of coleslaw and macaroni and cheese, bottles of Tabasco and salsa. Sounds and smells mixed, mingled in the air, it was a frothy brew that excited all the senses, it was thick and visual you could almost hear the atmosphere.
Laughter and lively conversation and the scratch of spoons scraping containers punctuated the brief seconds when silence threatened the festivities.
Off in a corner the sounds of coughing, sneezing, and a constant complaint of congestion, and labored breathing. All in white, pale and gaunt and almost transparent a stranger tried to laugh. But, it broke into gasping, ragged breaths, the sound of a person drowning without the benefit of water. It was a heartbreaking sound and it wracked the frames of everybody close.
In an inexorable wave the SARS-cov-2 virus spread across the gathered associates. Nobody was immune, the variant was grown in the dark places of the unvaccinated, waiting to ambush anybody foolish enough to invite disaster to their party and those who didn’t as well, it didn’t discriminate. To the virus everybody was a welcome guest. Quarantine and a few breakout cases followed hard upon the end of the party. It was the weariness of precaution and the need to return a normal that doesn’t exist, and maybe never will again that brought the people together.
Did anybody learn anything? Only time will tell.
[1] Edgar Allen Poe
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