by Andrew Daniel Dick

Jumbo was happy; he was always happy on Work Day and so—since every day was Work Day—Jumbo was always happy. He began his day at the gym. He liked a quick workout in the morning, something to get the blood pumping, but nothing that would tire him out. He hopped on the walking machine, picked his leg up and put his leg down in front of him. He repeated this with his other leg. Over and over again he picked them up, put them down. Suddenly, half an hour was gone and he dismounted from the machine, returned to his room and prepared for the day.

He found repetitive motions like these soothing, that he could do the same thing, in the same place—lose himself in it—and the world would change around him. Day would turn into night, light into dark, minutes into minutes, hours into hours, an entire cosmos changing as he performed his binary dance. This was comforting to someone like him.

This extended beyond his physical form, channeled through his tools. The hammer was his own personal time travel device. Not always forward either. Sometimes, while he was picking it up and putting it down, his mind would travel back to his school days, when he got to pick things up and put them down with his friends. He was on every team imaginable, so sometimes the things he was picking up were weights, sometimes they were balls, sometimes they were other people whom he was wrestling. No matter what sport, he was always the best.

Jumbo would often have visions, not from his own past, but foreign to him. These, he was told, were called imaginative fictions, but they seemed indistinguishable from those things that had happened to him inside of his own life. He took this to mean that these things must be happening to others around him or would happen to him in the future, that they were not imaginative fictions, but some sort of perspicacity that only he understood. Such was the power, he thought, of repetitive tasks, especially when they were completed with such expertise as his own. They could reveal truths that nothing else could. They could break down the fabric of the universe and the imaginative space separating one body from another.

He arrived at work and surveyed the big board. Since the contract with the apartment complex went through two weeks ago, there was only one job. Thus he returned to the construction site, beginning where he left off the day before, picking things up from one place and putting them down again in a different place.

People often gathered around him to marvel at his abilities. “Wow, Jumbo, do you never tire? Picking up such heavy things and putting them down again?” He smiled—a hidden happy smile that he showed to no one—and then picked up the heaviest thing that he could see and put it back down again. This was never done to be boastful, no. There were always heavy things to move each day and among them, always, was the heaviest thing. He simply saved it to move until the group came along to comment on his superior abilities. When they did, Jumbo would walk over to that heaviest of the heavy, pick it up and put it back down again.

And oh, how the crowd would applaud.

Jumbo worked right up to the lunch bell, when he went to the cafeteria and ordered a bowl of hearty stew. The company liked him well-fed, so that he could continue into the afternoon to pick things up and put them down. He sat at his usual table and took the spoon into his hands. He picked it up to his mouth and put it back down into the bowl. He did this again and again until the bowl of stew was empty and the spoon clanged against the ceramic bottom. Another time travel device, this spoon was. There were so many in his life.

As he was finishing his meal, his friend Nooks, Bestest Worker Brain, came over and sat down next to him. They often sat together at lunch or shared a table at the monthly Bestest Worker Brunch at the Best Western. Her job was completely different than his and yet no less important. She thought things up and wrote them down. She even helped Jumbo once. He used to pick things up and put things down sub-optimally. Thanks to her, he was much more efficient.

Jumbo enjoyed talking with Nooks. Today he decided to share with her his biggest problem: He didn’t have enough hands. Only three. He wanted to pick even more things up and put them down simultaneously, but he was limited by his three hands. Nooks took a sip from her own bowl of hearty stew and looked up at him.

“By that logic, no amount would ever be enough. If you had four, you’d want five, five you’d want six and so on,” she said. This was a good point, one that she’d made before, because he’d talked to her about this problem before.

“And look at the other Workers Brawn. Some have two arms, some only one. None of them can lift even half the weight that you can. I think they would wish for your strength, your three arms.” Jumbo thinks on this. It’s true that he was surrounded by weaker workers brawn. He felt sorry for them, sorry that they couldn’t know the extreme pleasure that he knew, of picking things up and putting them down with such expertise. They’d never know the feeling of being Bestest Worker Brawn, not so long as Jumbo was around.

“Don’t you ever wish you had a second brain? Wouldn’t that allow you to think twice as good?” he asked.

“More brains doesn’t necessarily mean better thought. This brain already makes me think exceptionally well. Well enough for Bestest Worker Brain, at any rate.”

“Yes, of course, I didn’t mean to suggest—” he started, but stopped when she unhooked the latch and opened her brain basket to show him.

“You see this ridge here?” she says, pointing to a cavernous divot in the shape of a dead serpent. “This is the ridge that allowed me to think up the idea for the beltless conveyor belt, helped me to think up the most optimal way for you to pick things up and put them down. This is my favorite ridge.” He looked at the ridge to which she pointed—then at the others around it—but couldn’t see what made it so special. They all looked the same, as far as Jumbo was concerned.

“Well, it’s my favorite ridge too,” Jumbo said, and meant it, since it did enable him to pick things up and put them down with optimal efficiency. “What are you working on these days?” he asked. She leaned in and whispered to him.

“Well, don’t tell anyone, yeah?” He nodded that he wouldn’t. “But I’ve been thinking I might reinvent the wheel. Now, before you say anything, I know I don’t have to. I want to.” Jumbo nodded at this. The wheel was already quite good. Sometimes his job involved placing things into a wheel barrel and pushing it to a different location. The wheel barrel was useful. The wheel was smooth. He couldn’t see how something like that could be improved, but then he wasn’t Bestest Worker Brain. Before she helped his efficiency, he couldn’t have conceived of a way to be better at his job, but she helped him nonetheless and so if anyone could improve on the wheel, he trusted that it would be Nooks.

She took out a notebook, opened to a dog-eared page and slid it across the table to show Jumbo.

“See here,” she said. On the pages were drawn all manner of shapes, with various equations written around each. There was a square—this one he knew well as it resembled the shape of the stones that he most often picked up and put down—along with several other shapes with various numbers of sides.

After a few moments, she took the notebook back and returned to her stew. Jumbo thanked her—both for showing him her notebook and her brain—and returned to work.

Returning home that evening, he worked out again, this time with weights. He picked them up and put them down, always striving to lift heavier weights, so that he might be stronger, be better, be the best Bestest Worker Brawn that he could be.

• • •

The next morning, Jumbo stopped at the big work board and found—rather than the construction site—something called Special Project X listed next to his name. He asked around and was directed to a warehouse next door to the company headquarters. When he entered, he saw an enormous array of materials along with a lengthy schematic needed for construction.

These were the strangest items he’d ever seen. When he touched them, he confirmed, these were the strangest items he’d ever touched. Rather than the usual elements he was used to picking up and putting down—the rectangular bricks of stone or concrete, the metal pipes and long pieces of wood—these needed to be placed in a particular order, according to a schematic. He spent most of that morning sorting through them, picking them up and putting them back down in groups, trying to make sense of the schematic and how the written shapes corresponded to the actual pieces.

The warehouse was a lifeless metal cage, and he suddenly felt trapped and completely alone. Truth be told, he didn’t much care for this project.

As he worked, his superiors arrived to watch him. They were two feet tall and their leathery wings kept them hovering in place. They were always smirking too, their tight skin stretching over their spherical heads and a single tiny fang peeking out of the small slit of a mouth. Their entire mass accounted for less than a single unit of his usual work. He fantasized that he could pick them up and put them down as easily as breathing.

He wondered if they might compliment him on his ability to pick things up and put them down and this idea excited him, made him want to work harder. As much as he disliked this new project, he knew he could do it and do it well. He was Bestest Worker Brawn, after all. He’d already identified the heaviest piece of equipment around him. Should they say anything, he would put on his show, picking it up and putting it down with such ease so as to make their heads spin. He’d been complimented many times by the passersby, but never by the bosses.

They spoke only among themselves, talking in whispers about how much money this was going to save them. These kinds of conversations were common among the bosses, or so he’d heard. They’d flap their leathery wings fast enough to hover in place and watch the work. This was their work, near as Jumbo could tell. Consequently, their tiny sex organs became engorged—a side effect of their biology, it was believed—and they began pleasuring themselves, all the while continuing to watch Jumbo at work, all the while discussing something called profit margins.

• • •

Jumbo was unhappy. This was an entirely new feeling for him. As he left work that day, he decided he would go to see the Conventicle. He took the long way home, walking through the park and stopping at his favorite fountain, where he liked to watch the water move. The fountain’s job was not unlike his own; it did the work of pumping the water up to the top before allowing it to cascade down its many layers in effortless beauty.

The Conventicle arrived in a flurry of wings and feathers. Together, they were five magpies who were in the habit of landing on Jumbo whenever he elected to take the scenic route. They spoke truths—at least as far as they saw things, they’d say—and always the truths they spoke would turn out to be actual truth. And why shouldn’t they be? They seemed to exist to observe just as Jumbo existed to pick things up and put them down, so why wouldn’t their seeing be every bit as masterful as his brawn? They were wise, though they mocked him—all in good fun, they’d say—and so Jumbo enjoyed speaking with them.

Each member of the Conventicle landed on a separate part of his body. One on each of his three arms, one on his shoulder, and one on the end of his exhaust pipe, which they called his anus. They enjoyed that they were a multitude and he was not. They enjoyed that they were small enough and he was large enough so that they could perch on him and he couldn’t keep more than one of them in view at a time. They spoke in unison, surrounding him with their sound.

“Jumbo is here, our day grows brighter. And how was your day of work? Did you time travel?” they said, their collection of voices harmonizing, creating discordance and resolving it, like a lyric in a song.

“Not today, unfortunately. No, today was no good at all,” Jumbo said.

“Tell us, Jumbo. Tell us of your woes. Perhaps we can help,” they said. So he told them of the new assignment, of the strange pieces and the special warehouse where he was forced to work.

“We were already familiar, dear friend. We saw the machine parts being brought to the warehouse,” they said. Of course they knew why he had come to see them; they always knew; they were always watching. The Conventicle repositioned themselves around him.

“Jumbo, you’re one of our favorites, you know that. That’s why we never crap on you. You’re so positive and singular. We don’t want this to happen to you.”

“But what’s happening?”

“You’re making your replacement,” they said. “Why would you do this willingly? See yourself into obsolescence?”

“No, not me. Not Jumbo. I’ve won Bestest Worker Brawn eleven cycles running now. They’d never replace me.”

“It’s happening now, as it happened before. We knew the one before you. We saw him at his work. Imagine what might become of you if you don’t have your job.”

“I don’t understand. I’m the fastest; I’m the strongest. I’m Bestest Worker Brawn.”

“Fastest is never fast enough; strongest is never strong enough, not for them who watch over their profit margins.”

That night at the gym, as he picked things up and put them down again, he time traveled, conjuring images in his head, not from his past, nor any analogous past that he could fathom, but from what could only be his future. He saw the completion of the project, saw the colossus of a creature, working at a pace hitherto unimaginable, conjuring not three, nor four, nor even five, but a seemingly infinite number of arms from its torso. He saw it as clearly and assuredly as any vision that had come before.

His first thought was to shake it off, to ignore it, but no. He knew the truth and now, just because the visions were repulsive to him, that did not mean that he could suddenly decide to stop believing in their certainty, their relevance. He’d done well to believe in them all this time and this was his reward. He would not turn his back on such a gift.

• • •

The bosses were present again, watching him work, this time pleasuring themselves in a floating circle of adjoining satisfaction, with one pleasuring the next and so on until the last, who pleasured the first.

Jumbo decided to say something. He approached them and—though it took them a while to notice—they eventually stopped pleasuring each other and stood to address their stout employee.

“Am I creating my replacement?” Jumbo asked them. They all looked at each other, struck silent by the question. After a moment, they looked around the circle to decide which of them was going to answer. Finally, the most lithe of them floated forward to address Jumbo.

“Yes, it’s true that you are making your replacement, but isn’t that what you want? Wouldn’t you finally take some rest?” The creature’s voice was like static from knitwear. It crackled and jumped in volume. After every word it spoke, the creature straightened and pulled tighter on its tiny necktie, so that the words came out in a halting staccato.

“I don’t need rest. I need to pick things up and put them down,” Jumbo said.

“This machine will do that better and without all of the nasty world-ending residue that exudes from your exhaust tube,” the creature said, pointing at Jumbo’s anus.

“I don’t understand. Have I done something wrong? I thought I did good work for you.”

“Oh, son, you have. And we need you to continue to do it, right now, and finish this project. We’re counting on you.” After every exchange, the creature looked back to its associates, who smiled and nodded reassuringly at him, although some had already returned to pleasuring themselves, quietly as they could.

“What say you take an early break for lunch, huh?” The sprite said, flying up so that he could place his hand on Jumbo’s shoulder and ushering him toward the door. “You’ll feel much better after a nice large bowl of hearty stew.”

Jumbo sat for a long time, staring into his bowl of stew, but not eating any of it. His concentration was only broken when Nooks sat down across from him.

“Not hungry today, Jumbo?” She asked, starting on her own lunch.

“I guess not. Got a lot on my mind. How’s your project going? Reinventing the wheel?” He asked, leaning in and whispering his question to her as she’d whispered to him, since that was how secrets were meant to be spoken.

“Oh, that’s on hold, unfortunately. The uppers have me working on something new. A strange project. I’m meant to think up a machine that can think up other machines. They sit around and watch me all day, pleasuring themselves and talking about profit margins.”

Jumbo leaned in again to share another secret. “They’re doing the same with me. We’re making our replacements,” he said. Nooks sat back in her chair and took a spoonful of hearty stew up to her mouth. As she sipped, a revving noise sounded as her brain began working at full power. After a minute, a cooling fan started so that her head didn’t overheat.

“No, they wouldn’t do that to me. Maybe to you. Brawn is brawn after all. It’s quantifiable: how many things you can move and how quickly. That could be improved, but not me. My contributions aren’t quantifiable. My job has nuance and nothing and no one can do it like I can.”

She spoke louder than Jumbo had ever heard her speak. He whispered it as a secret and the rules of the secret were that she was meant to answer back in a similar hushed tone. He looked around the rest of the cafeteria. Their conversation had already managed to cause some heads to turn in their direction, some of them in mid-bite, a heaping spoonful of hearty stew floating in the air between their bowls and their mouths. He grew suddenly nervous and decided to smile.

“Of course, you’re right. I’m sure everything will turn out just fine,” he said, standing and gathering his bowl, which was still filled with stew. “I must be returning to work now.” She nodded at him dismissively and returned to her bowl.

Perhaps she was right. He’d only asked the bosses about his own job, not hers. He’d made the connection when she’d spoken about what she was doing—a simple leap in logic, Jumbo thought—but he could have been mistaken. He was not a Worker Brain and thinking such things was not altogether comfortable or common for him.

• • •

The warehouse work continued. Everyday he assembled more of his replacement. Along the way, through endless perusing of the schematic, Jumbo identified two of the heaviest pieces: what were to be the creature’s head and heart. He placed them side by side and considered them. As the work progressed, he had been formulating a plan. Integral to that plan was understanding which of these two was the most important piece. Without either of them—Jumbo inferred—the machine could not run, but between them there must be one that was most important. He had narrowed this down to either the head or the heart. He would need to narrow it down still further.

He wanted to ask Nooks. If anyone possessed the answer, it would be her. She’d helped him so many times in the past. She would help him again. The problem was that she hadn’t shown up to lunch for almost a week now. This wasn’t uncommon. She’d missed lunch for a period of time before, whenever she was caught up in a particularly tough brain problem and required endless hours of uninterrupted thought to get through it, but this time Jumbo thought the worst.

As it happened, the Bestest Worker Brunch at the Best Western was coming up and so he decided to wait for that, figuring that the chances of her being in attendance were better.

When he arrived, he made himself a heaping plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and home fries and poured himself a glass of apple juice. Already his exhaust pipe was making its usual happy whistling sound that only happened during Bestest Worker Brunch. He sat down at the table that he usually shared with Nooks, but she was not there. He started on his food. He was halfway through when a new creature entered the conference room. It was a floating nebula of colorful gas and sparking lights. It flew over and stopped beside him. As it began to speak, the cloud contracted and relaxed as if it was breathing.

Hello. You must be Jumbo. I’m Cornucopious, Bestest Worker Brain, the cloud said, its voice emanating from all around him, perhaps even from inside of his own mind. Jumbo set down his fork and stuck out his hand, uncertain of what to shake. A hand formed from the cloud of vapor and clasped Jumbo’s hand.

“Where is Nooks?” He asked, pulling away his hand, which suddenly felt cleaner and cooler.

Nooks has retired, the cloud said.

“I see. Aren’t you going to get some food? It’s quite good.”

I do not require food, the cloud said. Jumbo nodded at this and pushed his plate aside. He was suddenly not hungry. This was not the creature to ask his question—of that he was certain—but many other questions came to mind. He couldn’t help but to ask one.

“How many brains do you have?” Jumbo asked.

My computing power does not require a physical brain. I am able to work on any number of problems simultaneously and with maximum efficiency.

“Of course. Please excuse me,” he said, standing to leave. However, he stopped again and turned back to this new cloud creature.

“Have you ever considered reinventing the wheel?” He asked.

I haven’t.

“Might be something to consider. Might be able to be improved.”

There was a slight hesitation and then the creature spoke again.

No. The wheel is optimal. In the time since you posed your question, I’ve run simulations with all other conceivable variants and the wheel wins out in efficiency and accessibility, not to mention the cost that would accompany a change of that magnitude, but thank you for the puzzle.

“I see. Thank you,” Jumbo said, leaving the Best Western.

He decided to try the Conventicle, to see if they had an answer to his question. They found him again as he reached the fountain in the park.

“Jumbo looks troubled by a thought. Unburden yourself, friendly giant.”

“Which is most important: the head or the heart?” Jumbo asked.

“What an interesting question,” the Conventicle said. “What does he mean?”

“I’m only strong enough to hold one. It should be the most important.”

“He asks as it pertains to his replacement. He finally believes us.”

“Will you help me?”

“Most important, this is irrelevant, as without either of those parts, your replacement will not function. Therefore, choose one, keep it for yourself and your job will be secure.”

Before he left he asked them one more question: “Do you know where I can find Nooks?”

They directed him to a bar. He was only loosely familiar with this type of picking things up and putting them down. In his younger years he dabbled in it himself, but it always had adverse effects on his work and so he came to avoid it. Still, he saw the repetitive motions of the patrons at the bar and thought: Were they each time traveling? Something must be captivating as there were so many there and they stayed for so long.

He found Nooks in the beginning stages of retirement. Her brain basket was open to the world and there was a bird nesting in her favorite ridge. Open in front of her, next to a pint of ale, was the notebook that Nooks had shown him earlier. There were additional sketches, all revolving around her continuing search for the wheel’s replacement.

He realized then that he might have made a mistake in telling Cornucopious about Nooks’ idea. If Cornucopious hadn’t ever considered it, then Nooks must have been working on it on the sly. Would she want to hear that the wheel redesign wouldn’t work? Would she even believe him?

Finally, Nooks looked up from the page and spotted Jumbo standing in front of her.

“Oh, look, it’s Jumbo. Looks like you were right after all. Broken clock, I suppose. Come to gloat, then?”

“Of course not. I’ve come to request your guidance.”

“Sit down. Share a table with me once more,” she said. He did as she asked, sitting down across from her at the stout and wobbly wooden table.

“Did you see the new Bestest Worker Brain? Quite impressive. Why don’t you ask them your question?” she asked.

“I don’t like them. They’re a weird tingly cloud. They do not eat at the Bestest Worker Brunch. I want to ask you my question. I trust you.”

“Go on, then.”

“Which is most important: the head or the heart?” She took up her drink to her lips, looked at him curiously, waited for him to elaborate. So, he did. He told her of his discovery and of his conversation with the Conventicle. As she realized what he was planning, Nooks began to smirk.

“For what you’re planning, I agree with the Conventicle, either the brain or the heart will suffice.” He nodded his understanding and thanked her.

“I see you’re still working on your wheel redesign?” he asked.

“If I can crack this and patent it, then this firing suddenly becomes a proper retirement,” she said. He thought again about telling her what Cornucopious had told him, but knew immediately that Nooks wouldn’t want to hear that from him. He thanked her for the advice and went home.

He had hoped to be told the correct answer. He wasn’t used to thinking through a problem. He was used to being given a task and performing it, fastidiously, until completion. His was a life of incremental progress, of patience, of physics and the physical. He believed them—the Conventicle and Nooks—that the choice didn’t matter for what he hoped to accomplish, but still that left him with the choice to make. What if he chose wrong?

• • •

The day arrived at last. All of the bosses were assembled again, ready to see the completion of the machine. All of the pieces were united from disparate piles, making something glorious that wasn’t previously there. The bosses couldn’t do it. They weren’t strong enough even to lift the lightest of the things that he picked up and put down on the regular.

The heart. That was his decision, though he still had no idea whether it was right. Still another question loomed in his every thought: Could he do it? Call it programming. Call it biology. Call it momentum or the unquenchable need for symmetry. Whatever the reason, he’d never before picked something up that he did not—swiftly and expertly—put down again. The thought was repulsive to him.

As Jumbo approached the heart and prepared himself, he considered all of the things that he was about to lose: no more workouts; no more nourishing hearty stew; no more Bestest Worker Brawn.

The heart was heavy. He felt every gram as he lifted it up. His muscles tightened and flexed to bring it aloft. The crowd of passersby and bosses grew silent as they waited for Jumbo to set the heart into place, but instead, he simply stood there, testing the new weight, feeling his new reality in his hands.

Seconds passed. The discomfort began steadily, the strangeness of not completing the job, the itch it created and the pressing need to scratch. Minutes passed and the excited expectation from the assembled audience turned to shocks and screams as they slowly realized what he was doing. His muscles began to scream at him too. He had to shift the weight from hand to hand, eventually freeing up one arm at a time so that it could rest and better shoulder the burden when its turn came again. Eventually he found the greatest relief by shifting the weight onto his back and holding it there with one or two hands.

He decided to leave. The assembled bosses tried to stop him, but they were akin to gnats buzzing around his massive form. He barreled out of the warehouse and walked his familiar path home, but rather than stopping at his house, he continued on, moving away from the creature that was to be his replacement.

Everywhere he went, people yelled. “Put it down!” they’d say. “Why would you continue to hold it in your hands like that?” These were the spectators who’d once praised him for his abilities, for whom he’d keep the heaviest of the heavy to give them a show. He hadn’t thought that—in taking on this new reality—he’d be giving them a new job, too.

He thought he’d lost everything from his old life, that this heart was his only companion now. However, he eventually found a way to time travel again. It happened a step at a time, when the weight was balanced perfectly on his back and he could harken back to his early morning workouts, picking one leg up and putting it back down again.

He saw himself walking through green fields and snow-covered blankness. The walking gait was the same as his current pace and so it was easy to superimpose those images with his current moment. He saw himself arriving at a new city and stopping at the base of a large pedestal at the center of a gorgeous fountain. He stepped onto it and locked his feet into place so that he could properly support the weight of the heart.

Time passed. The world moved around him. The Conventicle found him, perched on him for a time. They spoke to him; he spoke back. The water cascading down the levels of the fountain was soothing.

He’s thrown back into the present moment; a step at a time he continued forward. His arms quivered again from the weight of the heart. He wasn’t worried. He’d seen the future. Now he just had to get there.