Short Story – The Tulpamancer

 Working with a prompt from It Takes Every Word, I spent some time this morning writing a short story. Actually I came up with the idea for this story a long time ago. But it was a good fit for the theme we’re exploring at the next meeting of the KCKCC Writing Club. So that seemed like a good excuse to type it up.

The story itself is short enough to include here in its entirety.

________________________________________________________

 

The Tulpamancer

“Don’t believe a word of it,” Sharon said to me. “She doesn’t even have a boyfriend.”

At this point I’d been at InfoTech Solutions for only three weeks. Still learning my way around and trying to figure out who was who. Sharon was officially the head of the HR department and unofficially the company’s gossip clearinghouse. So if anyone in the office would know whether or not Martina Green had a boyfriend – other than Martina herself – Sharon would be the definitive source.

Still, I felt I had to ask.

“Are you sure? Because she says she does. Claims his name is Barry and that he works for a different IT company. She even has his picture in a frame next to her computer.”

“Let me tell you about that picture,” she replied with a smirk. “One time when she was away from her desk, I stepped into her cubicle and snapped a quick photo of her supposed boyfriend’s portrait. Then I ran an image search, and do you know what I found?”

I let her savor her I-know-something-you-don’t-know moment, and then I prompted her to continue.

“What?”

“That’s actually a head shot of some male model she found on the internet. His real name is Dusan or something like that, and he’s a fashion model from Eastern Europe. So not Barry from another IT shop five blocks away from here.”

“I don’t understand. Why would she pretend to have a boyfriend if she doesn’t have one?”

Sharon gave me an indulgently exasperated look.

“Some women feel like they aren’t really a person unless they’re in a relationship with a man. So even an imaginary boyfriend is better than no boyfriend at all.”

 

A few days later I passed Martina’s desk on my way to the break room, and I noticed a large bouquet of roses in a vase next to Barry-slash-Dusan’s picture.

“Looks like someone has a secret admirer,” I said to her.

“Oh, Barry’s no secret,” she replied with a reflective smile.

“He must have done something really bad if he had to make up to you with that many flowers.”

“Heavens no!” she exclaimed with indignation, mock or true I couldn’t tell. “Barry never has to send me make up gifts because he never does anything bad.”

Definitely imaginary, I thought as I nodded and resumed my coffee break journey.

 

The next day the company owner made a rare appearance at the office.

“Can I have everyone’s attention for a moment, please?” he said in his most managerial tone. Immediately all eyes were on him and his two companions: Sharon from HR and a new guy who seemed somehow strangely familiar.

“Everybody, let me introduce Barry Newman. He will be our new SQL database administrator. He joins us from ZipData, our cross-town rivals. To welcome Barry to the team, there’s cake in the break room.”

From across the room I tried to read Sharon’s reaction to the new arrival, but she held her face still and expressionless.

 

They made no secret of their great love. The boss gave the new hire the cube right next to Martina. I was too busy with my own job to spend much time monitoring them. But every time I did happen to glance their way, they seemed to be locked in some private conversation across their mutual wall rather than doing anything productive.

“You two need to get back to work,” Sharon loudly snapped at them one Friday afternoon.

Exchanging one of those intimate smiles shared by couples who know something nobody else knows, they more-or-less did what they were told.

 

After work that evening, several of us went for drinks at a nearby bar. Normally Martina and Barry kept to themselves, but this time they decided to join their fellow employees.

It was a surprisingly good experience. Barry was witty and charming. And even mousy little Martina came out of her shell a little. Indeed, we had so much fun sharing stories and telling jokes that when the happy couple announced that they had to get going, a little light went out of the place.

I found myself sharing a table and a pitcher of beer with the ever-popular Sharon and Chuck from accounting. We made an odd trio, with the HR manager’s conservative mien and Chuck’s more laid-back attire and vague scent of marijuana.

By then I was five or six drinks in, and maybe that made me not quite worried enough about provoking the woman who held dominion over my paycheck.

“Guess you were wrong about Barry,” I observed.

“Yes,” she replied, her lips pursed. “I guess I was.”

“About what?” Chuck asked, not in on it.

I explained the theory about Dusan the fashion model.

At the end Sharon added, “Everyone has a doppelganger somewhere.”

“He isn’t a doppelganger,” Chuck replied. “He’s a tulpa.”

“A what?” the other two of us asked in unison.

“A tulpa,” he repeated. “A being conjured into reality by sheer force of will. The Theosophists came up with the concept based on a Tibetan Buddhist myth. The idea is that if you believe enough in an imaginary person, he can become real He’ll even have his own independent personality, thoughts and actions.”

“What a lot of …” Sharon started.

“Awhile back a group of fanboys on Reddit tried using group meditation to create completely real, living versions of characters from My Little Pony.”

“Did they succeed?” I asked.

“Depends on how you define success,” he replied.

Sharon shot him a wordless glare clearly expressing wonderment that such an obvious stoner ever got a job in accounting.

 

Slowly and by degrees, joy fled InfoTech Solutions. Our jobs all remained the same, neither more nor less engaging than they’d ever been. But a gradual sense of pointlessness set in, as if there was less and less purpose to spending my days writing code. Though nobody talked about it, I could tell that everyone else had the same feelings.

Everyone, that is, except for one particular spot. Between the Martina and Barry cubicles, warmth and light still glowed like the corner of the Selfish Giant’s garden. They chatted and laughed and sent each other memes and fed take-out food to each other over their wall and listened to songs with their headphone ear buds shared between them. Unlike the rest of us, they appeared to be doing no work at all now. And yet they were the most happy.

Eventually Sharon could stand it no longer.

“Alright you two, that’s enough,” she barked at them. “I’m putting you on report with a strong recommendation that one of you be moved to a different cubicle.”

Martina took a brief break from staring into her boyfriend’s eyes.

“Y’know, Sharon, I’m getting tired of you,” she said with a slight melancholy in her tone. “I think it’s time to let you go.”

 

The next day Sharon didn’t show up for work. Or the day after that. Or the day after that. Nor did the company show any sign that it had hired a new HR manager or was even attempting to replace her. It seemed as if whatever purpose she served simply no longer existed. Sharon was, and then Sharon wasn’t.

She still existed in the “Meet Our People” page on the InfoTech web site. Out of some strange, sourceless curiosity, I downloaded her photo from the site and uploaded it to an image search.

Her picture was an exact match for a real estate agent in Arkansas. Not close. Exact. There Sharon sat next to a stranger’s name and the assurance that she was the number one closer in the greater Fayetteville area.

 

I got out my phone and took a selfie.

I ran an image search.