Synergeist: The Haunted Cubicle by Daniel M. Strickland

turned down the aisle toward her area rather than heading toward the door. The mental equivalent of a thrill ran through her. She watched, riveted as he made his way toward her cubicle. He passed the opening. She wished she could say, “Hey! Looking for someone?” Of course, she probably wouldn’t, even if she knew how.
    Stopping occasionally, he made a circuit around the group of attached cubicles that contained Millie’s last refuge. He made his way back to the opening of her cube and entered. Martin came over to beside the chair and put his hands on the top of the box where Millie was.
    This time she did not move away. Last time it hadn’t hurt her, only scared her. She slowed her perception of time to a crawl. When she observed people’s auras from a distance, she got a sense of what was going on with them, what they were about, but this was altogether different.
    It was all there in ultra-Technicolor. She instantly knew Martin as she had never known anyone, even herself. It overwhelmed her to try to understand it all at once, so she picked out prominent eddies to study. She saw his wry sense of humor, as well as twin currents of disaffection and a sense of fun that fed it. She smelled the desire to blaze brightly, the cold dark blankets of self-doubt, and inertia that tried to smother it. She tasted love, bound up, protected, and imprisoned and heard his mind roaring with curiosity. It seemed corny even to her, but she could feel his soul. But as they say , she thought, it is what it is.
    She wanted to give him a big hug. She sensed a slow motion ripple building in his aura. He had sensed her. Like being caught listening to someone’s private conversation, she was embarrassed and retreated to under the chair.
    All that took but a moment in real time. Martin paused a second or two, turned on the light mounted under the bookshelf, opened the box and began looking through it. As he lifted each item and inspected it, she noticed something she had missed.
    She assumed that the Millie Field generated by her things varied in intensity by the amount of physical contact in accordance to an elegant relationship such as: Millie Essence = (Neverland Constant) x (mass) x (duration of contact)^2. But the origami swan she had made in minutes burned much brighter than the yoga book she used daily. There was something missing from her equation. It was another mystery to unravel. She suspected it was an important one.
    Martin put something, a slip of paper or a photograph, she couldn’t tell what, in his pocket. He put the lid back on the box and left. She was disappointed he didn’t move the box. But she was encouraged that she had gotten his attention and that he considered it possible the messages had a real connection to her.
    She moved back to the sweet spot on top of the box and recalled the memory of Martin’s aura. She had a perfect snapshot of his soul frozen in her photographic memory, dazzling in its infinitely complex detail, and broad sweeping patterns. Frozen was not the right term though. Captured but not still. The memory moved and shifted as if it was itself a living thing. In it she felt history, sweeping changes over the years and infinite potential paths that lead off into the future. Breathtaking.
    What would she do with such a gift? Not much at the moment. She hadn’t even gotten him to move the box. She would think about that later. Martin left the building. With her Millie-Vision she could follow him home. Then it would be possible to visit him there. Visit him, and do what? Her storehouse was full. Time to leave another message. Where? At his house? That didn’t seem to be a good idea though. She didn’t want him freaking out because the prank or “the thing from beyond the grave” was following him home.
    She needed this message to have impact because she might not get another. That notion was sobering, but one thing at a time. She considered and discarded many possible delivery media. Most involved