Invisible Parties — 17 of 31

Book - Ex Officio

office party is a challenging party in tangle. office party is south of startroom. The description of office party is "Paneled ceilings, carpet tile, decor that's dead inside. A table of snacks and a sad-looking punchbowl. The non-smell of recycled air. Party decorations from a party store[one of]. You've never had a job in a context remotely like this, so it seems unlikely that they're constructing this out of your memories. That plastic-y air smell is too solid. Has to be something else[or][stopping]." Understand "function" as office party.

the paneled ceiling is an unimplement in office party. The description of the paneled ceiling is "These things always make you think of piled-up dust and dessicated dead birds. Which is unfair, since those appear in other ceiling-spaces too."

the carpet tile is an unimplement in office party. The description of carpet tile is "It's one of those horrendous colours that exists weirdly in between actual colours that a human being might appreciate."

the party decorations are an unimplement in office party. The description of party decorations is "A few helium balloons already beginning to deflate, some hologram-sparkle streamers, an unused stack of conical hats." Understand "balloon" or "balloons" or "streamers" or "hat" or "hats" or "conical" as party decorations.

The printed name of office party is "Function".

the buffet table is an unimplement in office party. Understand "snacks" or "snack" as buffet table. Instead of eating buffet table: say "You take a small nibble of something that doesn't look too offensive. Appearances prove deceptive."

The desolation of office party is "Hunh. There's a pile of empty clothes in one corner. That's probably not good. And there's another.[p]You catch the next one in the act: a crystal-clear radiant glow, an understated celestial hum, and a pasty young man is gone. The problem is that the radiant glow is [i]so[/i] clear that it illuminates the details of the process, which seems to operate at slightly different rates on different tissues: it's possible that you imagined the look of total agony in his eyes, but you're unwilling to wager on it.[p]The pace picks up almost immediately; three more are gone before you can think."

The demise of office party is "You begin to glow, first at the extremities but rapidly spreading up your limbs to the core. Skin disintegrates, and your nerve-endings have time for one unified, maximal howl of pain before they're gone. You're still conscious after all your senses are gone, but only for a mercifully brief moment."

the office workers are a crowd. The description of office workers is "They're tired, kept going by social duty and quiet desperation. This, and the light, makes them look ugly." The office workers are in office party.

The tsadesc of office party is "Periwinkle-blue shirt, grey pencil skirt. The sort of shoes called sensible by people who aren't. Hose that fall into that narrow band between Too Sexy To Be Appropriate and Too Unsexy To Be Appropriate - which you can recognise in others, but have never bothered to learn how to select for yourself."

The listendesc of office party is "Upbeat, vacuous elevator rock. Gives you the crawls."

The boozedesc of office party is "Mass-market lager and anaemic punch. Avoid."

The shortbooze of office party is "You ignore the punch and seek out the least offensive of the lagers."

The rivdesc of office party is "Rivka is perched atop a photocopier, necktie akimbo, regarding you with bland amusement."

The rivcostume of office party is "Rivka's shirt is untucked and two sizes too big for her, and her tie is in punkish disarray. She isn't smoking, but she might as well be."

The rivweapon of office party is "a .40 automatic".

The javeinit of office party is "Jave is hovering by the buffet table, avoiding making eye contact with anyone."

The javedesc of office party is "She's fetchingly dowdy. Herringbone skirt. Chunky-rimmed glasses. Inexpert updo. She's hovering by the refreshments table, trying not to engage with anyone."

The javecostume of office party is "Herringbone skirt. Chunky-rimmed glasses. Inexpert updo, beginning to fall apart."

The closeclue of office party is "There's a paper plate abandoned on the edge of the buffet table."

the paper plate is a clue. the javeclue of office party is paper plate. The description of paper plate is "The plate's been picked over, with a pile of rejected items - some limp celery sticks, an ill-favoured species of cracker - over on one side. She loves food, but she has a habit of throwing everything on her plate and sorting out what she actually wants to eat later. You've been curious about that, and haven't found the moment to ask: is it a military mess-hall habit, or is there something going on from further back? There's a lot of undramatic, ordinary mystery left to go over. Or, to put it another way: you don't really know one another all that well."

Carry out using abider in office party:

say "Jave marshalls an office chair and several bottles of white wine over to a desk, puts her feet up, and stares at the ceiling. The message to the Rebeccas is clear: [i]your move[/i]. Oh, gods and monsters. She can do this for [i]days.[/i] And whatever reaction they want to get out of you, it ain't this.[p]You watch with interest. After perhaps half an hour, a youngish guy with bad hair attempts to start a conversation with her and is repelled with a firm 'voetsak'. Maybe an hour after that, a knot of women make an effort to draw her into a conversation, and are met with indifferent silence. (Nobody comes up to you, but you perfected your go-tae-fuck glower long ago.) Time drags. This would be insufferable if you didn't have Jave to watch, and if you didn't have a delightful picture of the Rebeccas getting steadily more irked.";

ruin everything;

[make the goal of foraging a little clearer]

Carry out using forager in office party:

say "You once went a month eating nothing but sedge roots, and it wasn't quite as dispiriting as this snack table. Maybe if you treat this as a blasted wilderness it'll all seem better.[p]Fire, first. Plenty of paper here, but not a lot of untreated wood. You'll just have to keep feeding it, then. Punch holes in a metal wastebasket for air-draw. A piece of tinfoil scrunches into a pot. There are packets of butter and salt around, and water, and really that's all you need for most cooking. You prop the wastebasket on a windowsill, start a fire, and start turning sad vegetable assortments and lacklustre salami into something worth getting enthused about. Braise, then turn into stew. There's plenty of starchy food to thicken it with; you grind crackers into powder with a beer-bottle pestle.[p]You're conscious of Jave watching, quietly amused. Nobody else appears to have noticed. What you're left with is a somewhat-blackened, thick, greasy soup, and smoky clothes. You've eaten similar-looking things a thousand times, and often it tastes like arse, but there's always a small sense of the magic of the process, of how the cauldron transforms the raw into the cooked.";

ruin everything;

Carry out using antinominalist in office party:

say "Well, obviously. The rules are what choke this place, and if she doesn't give a shit -[p]She heads straight for the door, and is gone before you can do anything about it. Yeah, given your druthers you'd ditch this party as soon as you humanly could, too, but given that she didn't leave with [i]you[/i] it's not exactly doing you any favours.";

make the lady run;

Carry out using laughing one in office party:

say "She could adapt to the style of humour prevalent here, assuredly - but that's the kind of humour that functions as a wall, when you really need a bridge.";

Carry out using warrior in office party:

say "Wiping the floor with this lot would get Jave's attention, but not in a [i]good[/i] way. And you're not sure if these are illusions, or reflections, or real people.";

Carry out using commander in office party:

say "She looks smaller, closed-in; you can't imagine this version of her directing anyone. Younger? Less assured, regardless. Is this why she was always horrified at the idea of being out of the field?";

Carry out using troublemaker in office party:

say "You're more interested in salvaging something from this godawful place than in making things [i]worse[/i]."

Carry out using critic in office party:

say "There's documentation everywhere here. You glance at an arbitrary selection of notices, memos and reports. People are tired and untrusting, is the short version. Almost all the language is oriented around professional self-defence; people scrupulously avoid anything that might make them vulnerable. So the problem is about how to pierce through that."