WALTER STOOD FACING THE MIRROR, fingertips poised on the final button of his light gray suit. It was a perfect shade of blue—not too light, not too dark—with a beautifully curved edge and four flawless holes punched through it. The button was exactly identical to all the others on Walter’s suit, but this was the bottom button, which made it, practically speaking, the least important. Walter found it sad that this little button served its purpose so perfectly every single day, and yet it would never be anywhere but the bottom.

Walter identified a lot with this button.

He pushed those thoughts out of his head, pushed the button through the hole and made his way to work.

This morning, like every morning, Walter rode the bus. The sky was overcast—thick, monotonous, clouds covered the City like a giant never-ending quilt. Walter stood jammed between other gray Suits, avoiding eye contact with the drab, emotionless faces of his fellow commuters. The same familiar strangers surrounded him: the grumpy girl with a large mole on the tip of her nose, the old man with a forest of nose hair, and…

Irene.

This was the moment of Walter’s day that he lived for, when he could watch Irene, quietly and unnoticed from across the bus, and believe, for just a few minutes every morning, that they might one day be together. He fantasized regularly about what their first conversation might be like. Their chance encounter during lunch, the vague recognition that they’d met before, the gradual realization that they were kindred spirits who had somehow found each other in a world where nothing ever seemed to change. They would complete each other in a way that turned all other aspects of life into afterthoughts. Getting to know one another, they would realize that they shared the same perspective of family before career, and the same distaste for the regimented hierarchy of their employer. They would share loving looks across the lunchroom table, as though there was an inside joke that only they understood. Her laugh would be chipper and short, and he would spend his working hours thinking of jokes to evoke it over dinner. They even agreed on the principles of parenthood, on the number of children they wanted, and on moving from the City to the country to raise a family of independent thinkers whose self-worth was not tied irrevocably to their position on the Ladder.

Of course, this was all in Walter’s head. He had never spoken to Irene.

She wore a white blouse and a dark grey skirt, revealing pale and slender legs, which she always had crossed, left over right, as she stared out the window. Walter imagined that she was a Rung 20 Receptionist. The dark skirt certainly indicated a higher Rung on the Ladder. She always looked out the window during their commute, staring at the abandoned housing projects on the outskirts of the City, the rows of identical high-rise apartments, the urban sprawl feeding its way to tall glass towers that culminated in the tallest of them all—the Tower—at the center of everything. To his outright disgust, her perfectly curved calves reminded Walter of his coat button. Could he not spend one minute of one day not thinking about buttons?

Walter didn’t talk to her. He didn’t move from his spot. This day was in every way just like yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. In fact, each day of Walter’s life was identical to the previous, and to the one that waited for him tomorrow. Each morning. Each commute. Each shift. Each dinner. Even his dreams were the same.

…Dreams of flying free, high above the Tower, then losing his power of flight and falling—down, down, down—thousands of stories to the concrete below, but waking up just before hitting the ground…

Walter felt a sudden rush of fury well up in his chest; he just wanted something—anything—to be different. He suddenly broke the bus’ silence and hollered at the top of his voice:

“Somebody DO something!”

But no one moved. The girl with the mole glared at him. The old man with nose hair shook his head without looking up. Blushing, Walter took a cautious glance at Irene. She was still staring out the window. He wondered if she had even heard him. He felt so powerless, trapped in his own life.

His only comforting thought was in remembering the letter in his pocket. It meant that this day would be his last. That, at least, he could still control. He smiled.

The afterlife…now that would be a nice change of pace.

*****

            From the moment he awoke that morning, Walter had known that this day would be different. The date was 6/25/75.

In his pocket on this particular morning was an envelope that had been sealed exactly ten years ago. Inscribed on the front in his own handwriting was:

For Walter. Do not open until 6/25/75.

His hand felt the soft paper. He didn’t need to open it. He knew what it contained, for he had written it himself, thousands of identical days ago. He could still picture every word:

Dear Future Walter,

            I hope you are well, ten years from now. This is me (you). Is the Tower still growing taller? What Rung have you reached? I am hopeful that you will have accomplished all the goals we have agreed upon:

            1) Find the girl of your dreams and marry her

            2) Order at least two, but no more than three, children

            3) Climb ten Rungs, one for every year

Write back (just kidding).

                                                              Truly,

                                                                        Past Walter

Although it was written in his own hand, in many ways it was penned by someone he no longer knew: an optimist. Back then, he had been full of energy and hope – fresh out of school and ready to catapult up the Tower two Rungs at a time. What a fool he had been.

But at the end of the letter was one piece of advice that Walter considered uncharacteristically wise:

            P.S. If you haven’t climbed even a single Rung, then kill yourself.

Walter nodded to himself. This task he could certainly accomplish.

A thrilling shiver ran through him and he became aware that Irene was looking right at him. Not past him, and not to the guy next to him, but at him, he, Walter! He was caught so off guard that he could scarcely move a muscle—his eyes widened unintentionally, he tried to force his lips into a crude smile, and all sounds of the bus faded away, leaving only the thumping of Walter’s incessantly beating heart.

The squeaky brakes of the bus cut their moment short. Walter slammed into the woman behind him and grabbed wildly for the handrail. By the time he got back to his feet, Irene was gone.

“Shit!” Walter said to no one in particular as he pushed off the bus as fast as he could.

****

            Walter tried to scoot ahead of the stream of workers shuffling toward the Tower, but the mass of people filled the doorways and the corridor, making it impossible to get ahead. Walter only caught a glimpse of Irene’s hair before she disappeared into a large steel elevator.

She was lost. He had no idea where she worked, nor on what floor she worked. Even if he knew her job, finding her would be impossible, for Walter did not know what any of the floors of the Tower contained except his own. He did not know where the other halls led, or where each elevator went. He imagined all sorts of duties being performed hundreds of floors above him: traffic patterns analyzed, food pastes developed, school lessons created, government policy decided. Everything having to do with the City happened within the Tower. Every law that was written and every item manufactured – every imaginable job and duty was fully accounted for.

Walter stepped off the elevator at Neg-15, and turned into corridor C-103.

This was the button-making corridor.

Walter’s official job title was:

A-8 HOLE MAN, NUMBER 3

Walter’s job—the sole purpose of his existence, the very height of his civic duty, the culmination of all his hard work and the pinnacle of his many years of schooling—was to punch the third hole in every A-8 button that was made. Exactly the same. Every. Single. Time.

Walking down C-103, Walter came to a depressing realization. He would never walk through any other section of the Tower. He would never climb the Ladder, not even a single Rung.

Walter knew that this was not entirely his own fault. The Tower had created it’s own sort of Catch-22. In order to climb the Ladder, you had to be the best. You had to be so damn good at your job that the Management was forced to promote you. However, every job demanded, as stated quite clearly (and repeatedly) in the Manual: You must never do anything different than your instructions.

To climb the Tower, you needed to excel and stand out, but doing anything different from anyone else was against policy. So how on earth were you supposed to stand out? Walter had realized this a few years after graduation, while still stuck on Rung 5 where he had started.

It’s tough to stand out, he thought, when your job is to punch the third hole in every A-8 button. His work was perfect, every single time. And every single time, no one cared.

Still, Walter did his best. Every year, every day, every ten seconds, he received the two-holed button from his left, always the exact same shade of blue, always with the same rounded edge that he knew so well, with the same perfect smoothness to its surface. He took his puncher and lined it up with the top edge of the top hole, measured exactly 1.2 millimeters to the right, and lowered his puncher. Then, there were three holes in that button. He would then place the button on the shoot to his right, which sent it off to A-8 Hole Man Number 4.

That was his job. That was the full extent of it. The same ten seconds repeated themselves every day, every week, every year. Perhaps you’re beginning to comprehend why death seemed like such a welcome change.

There was, however, something that Walter found oddly satisfying about his job. He was the only A-8 Hole Man Number 3 in the entire Tower. Which meant the entire City. Which meant the entire world.

On all of God’s green earth, Walter was the only man who punched this hole.

And then, something else happened. There was only the slightest of changes to the earth, as it existed: a small hint of a smile crept across Walter’s lips. A true smile.

He was thinking of the moment when they discovered his splattered remains on the pavement, and the chaos that would ensue. Not concerning his death, for deaths were common and the bodies were quickly disposed of. The reason for his smile was that Walter knew that without him, for at least a brief period of time, there was no A-8 Hole Man Number 3.

Perhaps he would, for one small moment, make a splash.

*****

            Six hours and two thousand and eighty-eight buttons later, Walter squeezed his lunch paste into his mouth, swallowing it lump by grainy lump as he stared across the table and imagined Irene staring back at him.

As Walter sat ruminating over the chances of finding one person among fifty thousand, the lunch bell chimed and thousands of people stood in unison and shuffled toward the exits.

Walter approached the door to corridor C-103. He stood for a moment, toes on the edge of the sill, others pushing past him on either side. He was an unremarkable rock in the stream. He decided, as he was being bumped and jostled, that it was simply not worth it. He couldn’t make himself punch any more buttons. He decided that, although it hadn’t been specified in the plan, he would kill himself now. Mid-afternoon. Perhaps the sun was out.

He allowed himself to be swept over the threshold, but when every instinct in his body urged him to turn right, he instead turned left.

The long string of fluorescent lights was familiar and the walls were the same neutral gray. Walter walked quickly now, for if he were caught, his plan to kill himself might be delayed, which would be rather inconvenient.

The thrill of the moment enveloped him. He felt adrenaline flow through him. His heart rate increased and sweat formed on his brow. For the first time in longer than he could remember, Walter felt alive.

He hustled along Corridor C-121, took a right down C-57, and then a left into C-80. He became thoroughly lost. He realized that there was a massive flaw in his plan, namely that he had no plan. He was running around a towering vertical labyrinth, like one of those rats in a scientist’s maze.

He turned left, and then right, came to a fork, looked left and ran right. He was operating on instinct, his fate left to random chance. Security cameras gazed down at him, their blank, black stares following his every move. He didn’t have much time. The Management would soon realize that he was missing from his station, the buttons were piling up, or perhaps being passed along to A-8 Hole Man Number 4. A few flawed three-holed oddities might be mixing into the population.

Then, for the third time that day, Walter smiled.

He was standing in front of a bank of elevators.

He pressed “Up”.

The next anxious minute was spent deciding what his story would be if he was questioned. He thought of faking an illness, claiming that he was heading to the infirmary, but he knew it would be strange to be traveling without a nurse. He considered pretending to be new to the Tower, but quickly abandoned that idea, as he would be identified immediately by his nametag. Walter finally decided, just as the elevator chimed and the doors began to open, that he would use the Tower’s own policy against them.

There was a strict rule of information being disseminated only on a need-to-know basis. If anyone asked where he was going, he would give the Manual-perfect reply: You have all the information you need to know. Any question asked not pertaining to your specific duty will be treated as disorderly conduct.

He was still smiling at this thought when doors opened, which meant that he was still smiling when he unintentionally made eye contact with Irene.

Irene.

Standing in the elevator. Face to face with Walter. Staring at him.

But she was not the only person there. She was surrounded by five men, each in a pitch-black suit. They looked like cartoons—oversized bodies, tiny heads, infinitely black hair, and jaw lines that seemed painted on. All five men stood at least a foot taller than Walter. These men were Rung 100. They were the top dogs.

“Coming in?” one of the suits asked, staring at Walter with big empty eyes.

Walter slouched his shoulders and forced one foot in front of the other, shuffling awkwardly into the elevator. He avoided looking at Irene, lest she see how nervous he had become. He forced himself to breathe deeply. Calmly. In, out. In, out. He felt the sweat hardening on his face as it dried, and he slowly regained control over his body.

He turned to his right and tried to smile nonchalantly, but the Rung 100 man was staring intently at him. They all were, as though trying to identify a piece of rubbish that had become stuck to their shoes. The calm slipped from Walter’s body and he quietly patted himself on the back for relieving himself in the bathroom only minutes earlier.

The suit to his right sighed a big heavy-duty sigh and repeated loudly:

“WHICH FLOOR?”

Walter swallowed. Not time for the roof. Not now.

“380” said Walter calmly, smiling back at him.

The Suit wrote “380” on the screen and the doors closed. Walter felt like he had earned one more minute of his life. A small sliver of confidence pierced him.

The elevator climbed silently up hundreds of stories.

Walter could sense Irene behind him. He smelled what must have been her shampoo. He tried to glance at her reflection in the doors, but she was mostly blocked by the massive shoulders of Suit #3, and the neck of Suit #2. He could see a bit of her black skirt between the two men, but it came out as a quiet blur in the big metal doors.

“What’d Brian say?” said one of the suits.

“Same crap as always,” said another. “Blah, blah, excuse, excuse.”

They were literally talking over Walter’s head. He pretended not to listen. Their gruff baritones mixed together and Walter struggled to discern who was speaking.

“What are we supposed to do now?”

“Eject him.”

“Wish we could.”

“You can, you just don’t have the balls.”

“Eject him, fine! But then where would we be? Without a Manager on 30. You know how long it takes to train one of those guys?”

“Like an hour, I could do it in my sleep.”

“You want to?”

“The point remains, we have a problem that needs dealing with.”

“Look, the guy just needs a little recognition. Why don’t we bump him up a rung?”

“Give him the same duties, but tell him he’s, like…a New Managing Partner or some fluff like that?”

The voices overlapped even more, getting louder as the argument grew.

“Quiet!”

It was Irene. The hairs on the back of Walter’s neck stood on end. This was the first time he’d heard her voice.

Silence ensued.

“Instead of discussing management plans,” Irene continued, “on an elevator with a 5’er, why don’t you crack-snots lock your flapping mouth muscles until we get back to the office. Sound good?” Silence reigned.

Bing. The elevator stopped. The big suits all exited, heads down.

Irene followed them and Walter watched her stride away in awe.

Walter did not believe in fate; he thought that the concept of destiny was a bucket of crock. Each person was in control of their own lives, and although the Tower made it difficult to move up, your actions were still your own. There was no great force out there looking down on everyone, deciding what would happen. But this moment put that belief into question. The chances that he would run into Irene on the elevator—this elevator, on the last ride of his life—were so infinitesimally small that Walter couldn’t help feeling like, somehow, it was meant to be.

But he couldn’t speak.

He tried to call out, and even opened his mouth, but no sounds came.

The doors began to close.

At least this misery wouldn’t last much longer, Walter thought.

Then a hand appeared in the narrowing gap, reversing the doors’ movement.

“Forgot I’m going up,” she said. “Mind if I join you?”

Walter nodded and stepped to the side.

Fate was toying with him now. One final chance.

“I’m Walter,” he heard himself say.

She smiled. “I know.”

A thousand responses ran through Walter’s head, all of them along the lines of, have you been watching me as much as I’ve been watching you? But each one was just as quickly dismissed for its absurdity. What was he, a stalker? Keep it cool, Walter. Keep it icy cool.

Irene could apparently read his thoughts, for she laughed and said, “Your name tag.”

Of course. Stupid. That’s also how he knew her name.

“I ride the bus with you,” said Walter.

“Oh really? The G3-56c Westbound?”

“Straight from Pennington Triangle, every day.”

“No kidding,” she said, smiling. “Small world.”

Walter smiled too, but had to look away, as he couldn’t stand the pressure. His back began to sweat and his hands trembled. His jaw couldn’t keep still. It felt like all the air in the tiny elevator had disappeared and Walter was floating through space, in a dream, flying high or falling, it didn’t matter, but he was somewhere else, somewhere not on this world, somewhere he had longed to be for his entire existence and now here he was, wasting precious moments with the woman he loved.

“Sorry about all that talk earlier. Those idiots don’t know how to behave,” she said, bringing Walter back down to earth.

“No, no worries,” said Walter, making meaningless sounds in the shape of words.

They stood in silence. Walter was trying to think, desperately, of something to say. He was absurdly unprepared for this moment.

The elevator doors dinged open.

“Nice to meet you, Walter,” she said. “Maybe see you on the bus?”

“Yeah,” said Walter. He swallowed hard. ”Maybe.”

She walked away.

“Irene!” he called after her, louder than he meant to. This couldn’t be the end; this was not how it was meant to be.

She stopped and turned sharply on black high-heeled shoes. He held the doors open with his arm and felt a rush of confidence. He felt present in this moment, he felt alive; every atom of the world disappeared and all that existed was he and Irene, sharing this moment.

“Do you ever feel,” he started slowly, but gained momentum, “that there is more to life than just this?” He gestured around without taking his eyes off her. “The Ladder, the Rungs, the Tower. There used to be other things, right? Like, in history? We used to be artists and explorers and individuals. We went into space! Don’t you remember those lessons? Didn’t you ever want to be on that Apollo mission, or stand in the Sistine Chapel? Didn’t you want to be a Da Vinci or a Lewis and Clark, or anyone other than what this Tower turns us into?”

Irene looked at Walter. Their eyes were locked. For an instant, he thought a spark of recognition flashed across her face, but then she slowly shook her head.

“The Tower is the greatest human achievement in history and we all play a part. No matter your Rung.”

Walter pictured the scores of buttons hitting the assembly line that would now be missing a hole.

“But don’t you want…change?” asked Walter, candidly, desperately. “Don’t you want something different to happen for once?”

“There is nothing different, Walter. This is it.” She smiled at him, but it had lost its magic. “Prove me wrong, Columbus, and I’ll tell the world.”

Irene turned and walked away. Behind her drummed the busy news station that broadcast to the entire City. Walter realized that she was not a receptionist; she was a news anchor.

He stood in the static elevator, alone.

His index finger reached out to inscribe one word on the elevator screen: roof.

*****

            The wind whipped him like ferocious waves at an oceanic shore, pushing him left and right as he balanced on the edge of the roof, toes dangling over the abyss, staring at a sight of which he had only dreamed. Atop the Tower, it was all white below. Patches of clouds opened up, here and there, exposing distant shapes that he couldn’t identify. It was as if he stood on another planet.

The roof was littered with construction equipment, ready for the next push whenever the order was placed to build another level on the ever-increasing Tower.

In that moment, Walter realized the true absurdity of his situation, of the whole experience of his life. By doing as he was told and punching those holes, by being the best damn A-8 Hole Man Number 3 this City had ever seen, he was actually moving down the Tower because it was growing higher above him. The top was always growing, but Walter never climbed.

Walter pulled the envelope from his pocket and gingerly opened it with a finger. He let the envelope whip away over the edge of the roof as he unfolded the paper.

He had imagined opening this envelope so many times. He had imagined where he would be, what Rung he would be on, what perfect woman he would have sitting beside him as they read it aloud for their children’s entertainment, teaching them the lessons of hard work and long-term goals.

The writing was familiar. The words identical to what he had in his head.

Tears from Walter’s eyes were swept away in the wind. He cried because of all that he had failed to do – all the hopes that were lost and all the memories that would never be formed. He was just like all the others, he realized, no different at all. He was not talented, nor gifted, nor special. He was alone, lost, and done.

But then, as Walter finished reading the note, he experienced something very unusual: a surprise.

The last line of the letter was a postscript. Walter had never forgotten it. He remembered thinking that it would make a humorous endnote, a little tongue-in-cheek joke which had, right now, taken on a far too serious meaning.

But the postscript was not as he remembered.

He read the final line carefully, recognizing the handwriting, but not the words:

            P.S. Don’t take this note, or life, too seriously.

His knees weakened. Tears poured from his eyes.

He had no memory of writing this. Had his past self known what a fool’s errand this whole Ladder business really was? Had he included that final sentiment as a means of encouragement, to urge himself to find meaning elsewhere, something else worth living for?

So what if he would never be anything but A-8 Hole Man Number 3. Perhaps there was still a point to all of this. A reason to exist. Perhaps Irene was not the one for him, but somewhere out there, probably in this very building, someone else was. There was someone whom Walter could meet, and together they might change each other, complete one another, or give meaning to the other’s life.

That thought, that brief glimpse of potential, changed something in Walter. The memory of hope – the foolish belief that everything would work out for the best, that life would be okay, and that the point of life was to live – had returned. He intended to experience life, whatever that experience was. Death was the escape that fools take. That day was not exactly what he wanted it to be, but tomorrow was as yet unknown, and that potential was worth living for.

Something might change, Walter realized. He wanted to be there when it did.

As Walter turned to step down off the ledge, a gust of wind raced across the flat rooftop and he lost his balance. He stepped backwards to brace himself, but his foot found only empty space, and he tumbled over the edge of the Tower, arms flailing, falling thousands of stories toward the City streets below.

The last sensation Walter felt was a sharp pinprick on his cheek, caused the bottom button of his coat, which had been ripped off by the wind.

***

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