by Andres Kahar

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Like most workers in the market research call centre, Dashiell Samuel was a misfit. But even among fellow misfits, he was a standout. Partly because he wore a long, black cape.

Dashiell was the man who anonymously materialized into the anonymous environment of a call centre, right out of thin air — literally. It was during one evening shift: a cubicle was empty one moment, filled the next. No one in the phone room immediately noticed. They were under stern instructions to keep dialing, dialing and dialing for their minimum wage.

So, right then and there, "Dash" — as he was known to himself, in his own mind, at that time — became an employee of DeMens Market Research, Inc.

No one — not even the shift supervisor or sub-supervisor or relief supervisor or the field marshal — knew his name or how he ended up there. All anyone knew is some serious, rather simian-looking guy was suddenly sitting there in Cubicle #36 dialing numbers.

Besides, it was bound to help them in their collective bid for "productivity" and "efficiency." Not that anyone ever stopped to question what DeMens was producing efficiently, other than 20-minute phone surveys.

After a while, a few telephone interviewers did wonder about Dash’s sudden appearance, but no one said a word. Must keep dialing — they were programmed — and don’t even think of stopping until the supervisor says so. Productivity and efficiency are king and queen.

Dash first caught Guy’s bleary attention about a week later. Dash’s heartfelt and resonant musings, ostensibly about the recession-ravaged job market, couldn’t be easily ignored.

Guy sat one seat over from Dash (Cubicle #34), and he saw the caped newcomer as a kindred spirit: educated, but then derailed, damaged, discarded.

Guy had also awoken one shift, some mid-evening, during spring or fall, to find himself in a mould-laden, oxygen-drained call centre, dialing numbers alongside other automatons, nostalgically projecting himself back and forth, to past and future realities.

Guy commiserated as Dash publicly documented his recent travails: Dash had lodged some 700 job applications in the space of two months, with not so much as an interview to show for it.

By that point, Dash’s doomsday tone was a familiar part of the soundscape encompassing cubicles #30-49. Between phone interviews, which were often about credit card debt and employment figures, Dash heaved his heavy shoulders, groaning things like:

"The depression is coming. I just got some bad news from the States. A lot of people are losing their jobs. All is not well."

And other things like:

"It’s difficult out there, and it’s gonna get worse."

But it wasn’t always clear whether Dash was talking about the job market or his survey productivity — the latter was also a source of great anxiety for the simian mystery man.

But simian? Actually, Dash sort of resembled a yeti, the mythical Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas — albeit with prematurely graying dark hair, a necktie and part-time employment in midtown Toronto.

This must also be said about Dash: he was preternaturally honest, and jarringly so. But beneath his placid resignation, there was the creaking weight and caged thunder of godly responsibility. That was the feeling one got around the man. Dash was intense as a slumbering chainsaw: it was only a matter of time before he roared. For Dash, there seemed to be so much riding on every shift. Or perhaps every moment.

Of course, Dash’s long, black cape added to this air of intensity.

Guy was quite correct in sensing there was far more bearing down on Dash’s hairy shoulders than anyone fully knew.

Guy was curious, and began studying Dash closely.

He noticed that Dash’s dress from one evening shift to the next was often a telling reflection of his mood. Some shifts, it was a rumpled and out-of-fashion business suit. Those times, Dash was focused like a laser on survey productivity, and suffered distractions with curt admonishments and Dale Carnegie maxims. Other evenings, it was a frayed Oxford shirt with the sleeves torn off at the shoulders, with dirt-stained khakis completing the set. These times, Dash was devil-may-care — flirtatious, even sexual, with his colleagues, especially the teenaged girls.

The long, black cape was a constant.

But there was one other constant: The Briefcase. It was chained and handcuffed to Dash’s leg as he made his survey phone calls.

One time, a supervisor attempted to move The Briefcase to make room for a landed immigrant-cum-DeMens employee.

Dash: "I wouldn’t do that. You lack the strength."

Supervisor: "Then you move it. We need this cubicle for this landed immigrant guy here."

Dash: "The Briefcase stays. You lack the strength for handling its true power."

No argument.

And The Briefcase stayed.

As for the matter of strength, Guy noticed it was an obsession for Dash.

Guy learned more about this after he made one of his trademark smartass comments to one of Dash’s public groans.

Dash: "I have the testosterone level of a seventy-year-old man. With the help of colleagues from the organization I belong to, I’m addressing the problem. Aggressive strength is a must for me. For us."

There was wide-eyed silence from other interviewers, followed by furtive muttering and a few chuckles. The testosterone announcement was too earnest to be true.

Guy figured that Dash was laying groundwork for an oblique joke. So Guy, ever-witty Zeitgeist weathervane he was, replied obliquely.

Guy: "I guess you’d need aggression and strength to fight off the coming army of flying monkeys."

It was Guy’s naked ploy for the approval of fellow interviewers at the expense of guileless Dash. And Guy suffered the fate all clownish people-pleasers meet at some point: cool public indifference.

Yet, Dash was a good sport about it, and he answered Guy.

Dash grinned deadpan.

Dash: "Yes, flying monkeys. That’s a night I never forget."

So the kindred spirits were formally connected, after a fashion. They would talk.

Later that shift, during a break, Dash outlined his "aggressive strength" regimen, which involved puncture vine, lots of pasta, chicken breast and raisins. That’s what Guy remembered, anyway. He was still distracted. He was thinking of possible one-liners or observations to win over the attentions of the coolly indifferent girls along rows #30-49.

Dash didn’t show up for work the next evening.

Dash didn’t show up again for another three weeks.

When Dash did return at the end of the month, he looked like a new man.

Before the shift, Guy was braving the winter snap with smokers outside of the DeMens building. He was trying out some zingers on a tough crowd of sneering teenaged girls in parkas, when everyone became suddenly more distracted — better put, hypnotized — by Dashiell Samuel’s triumphant return.

Dash was riding a bike without a chain, propelled forward with powerful left-leg thrusts. He wore combat boots. The pant legs of his pinstripe slacks were cinched in tightly with safety pins. The pinstriped slacks matched the rest of the pinstriped suit, which, going by the boxy design, was some sort of almost-striking Hugo Boss knock-off. No winter coat. Dash’s hair was freshly cut into some almost-modish fashion of the day.

He propped his bike against the front of the building, but didn’t bother locking it.

There was potent zip in Dash’s step. Zip in his step, despite the obvious bulking up he’d done — to a proudly announced 240 pounds.

Guy noticed a new ferocity in Dash’s black, almond-shaped eyes. Guy assumed the puncture vine and pasta were working their wonders.

Guy also noticed two thick, studded leather belts strapped across Dash’s barrel chest in a bold ‘X,’ Mexican-bandito style. As Dash unlatched the belts, Guy saw The Briefcase come off his back, where it was secured during transit.

Dash seemed every bit the new man: there was a powerful whiff of confidence and power coming from Cubicle #36 that evening.

There was no more groaning about the job market: Dash said that, for him, the problem was solved. There was no fretting over survey numbers: Dash chalked up record numbers that evening, while supervisors and the field marshal observed in stunned silence, frequently dropping their own chalk. Testosterone was no longer an issue du jour: the girls must have sensed so much, because Guy couldn’t help but notice how they flushed and fawned around Cubicle #36 that evening.

Guy also eyed The Briefcase with suspicion. Dash set The Briefcase on the cubicle chair between he and guy (Cubicle #35) at the start of the shift. As before, The Briefcase was chained and handcuffed to Dash’s left leg.

Guy was intrigued: Who was Dash, this yeti-like mystery man? Where did he come from? What were his secrets? And what was with The Briefcase?

Guy had a few theories, ranging from drug-dealer to spy. The Hugo Boss knock-off was a clue to something. As was Dash’s effortless way with teenaged girls.

But clues to what?

So, that evening, when the shift ended at midnight, he decided to clandestinely follow Dash out of the building and homeward — or at least as far as Guy could keep up without Dash catching on.

Fortunately, Dash casually walked his bike in the direction of downtown, making it easy for Guy to keep pace some thirty feet behind. Dash was apparently unaware he was being tailed. The Briefcase was strapped onto his back, bandito style. He was humming some appropriately urban tune to himself, possibly by Tupac or Snoop or Busta or Jay-Z.

Then, as Dash and Guy (the curious, still unnoticed shadow) started walking a dark stretch parallel to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Guy froze in his tracks to witness a disturbing incident.

Two young muscled toughs burst from the shadows. They challenged Dash.

Tough #1: "You buggin’, ape man?"

The young tough sloped his shoulders menacingly, and made what might have been a gangland gesture with one hand while pulling up his low-hanging jeans with the other.

Tough #2: "Yo, you want some straight-up boo-yaaka, bitch?"

Tough #2 yanked up his low-riders.

Dash stood his ground, unfazed.

The same could not be said for Guy, who hung back in the shadows, observing in scared silence. Guy had heard about hardened inner city criminal types like the menacing duo, and he made sure to remain unseen.

But, in actual fact, Dash’s challengers weren’t very hardened, they weren’t very criminal, and they didn’t hail from any inner city — especially since, to the chagrin of wannabe Canadian gangstas, the legendarily nice metropolis of Toronto didn’t have an inner city per se.

Dash’s challengers were merely a couple of middle class white youths from the suburbs, culturally blurred by hip-hop music videos and borrowed black rage.

But Guy didn’t know so much at the time. Besides, there were grounds for Guy’s worrying: those baggy-panted distortions from the ’burbs were indeed packing, and they wasted no time flashing their pieces at Dash.

Years later, in the future, Guy connects Dash’s wannabe gangsta challengers with a TV news documentary about a U.S. Special Forces or Delta Force or Navy Seal vet — or is it CIA agent? Anyhow, the vet is asked about the most dangerous kind of enemy he ever encountered in the field. The veteran officer’s answer: an eleven-year-old armed with a Kalashnikov.

In the future, Guy wonders if the same rule applies to suburban momma’s boys.

But that’s The Future.

Now was The Present.

And Guy was spellbound by the bizarre events that followed.

He watched, while hiding in some bushes.

Tough #1: "Yo, what’s in the briefcase, ape man?"

Dash: "You mean The Briefcase. Are you cateye’in me when you oughta be diggin’ out your homey, homo?"

The menacing duo was caught off-guard, not to mention a little insulted by Dash’s homoerotic counter-challenge.

Tough #2: "How ’bout cappin’ yo ass, bitch?"

Dash: "How is your testosterone level?"

Tough #2: "Huh?"

At that point, Dash unlatched The Briefcase from his back, looking every bit the well-coiffed yeti bandito about to strike — and opened it. A bright light sprayed out of The Briefcase, illuminating the slack-jawed faces of Dash’s challengers. The toughs’ eyes widened with fascinated horror. The darkened peach fuzz on their cheeks stood on end, pseudo facial hair glimmering in the mysterious light.

Tough #1: "What’s that shit, bitch?"

Dash: "It’s called a temporal vortex."

Tough #2: "How’d you get that shit in the box?"

Dash: "I suppose I may as well tell you—since I can’t let you go free. Not now. Not in this temporal zone."

Dash explained something to the frightened toughs, but Guy couldn’t hear any words. There was a loud sucking and grinding sound coming from The Briefcase.

A blinding torrent of white light poured out of The Briefcase, splashing off the toughs’ faux-gold necklaces, rather brilliantly. The white light was accompanied by a deep vacuum-like sound, and that noise mounted to a near-deafening roar. That was followed by narrow blades of red-orange light, which cut the two toughs in half, their screams of pain drowned out by the roar of The Briefcase.

Finally, there was an explosion of light and sound. Then, suddenly, dark silence.

And Dash stood alone. He closed The Briefcase. The two suburban toughs were gone, vanished.

Dash strapped The Briefcase onto his back, hopped on his bike (sans chain), and pushed off for downtown, humming that same tune by Puff Daddy or Wu Tang Clan. Or was it Eminem? Guy really didn’t have a clue.

Guy stood there, near the cemetery, questioning his reality.

Meantime, Dash launched and rolled downtown, looking like a well-dressed yeti bandito on a treadmill.

The next evening at DeMens, Guy engaged Dash in conversation during break. Dash was in the middle of telling the teenaged girls about Tantric yoga, but he was a good sport about excusing himself for some man talk.

Guy: "I saw those punks try to steal The Briefcase."

Dash: "It happens often."

Guy: "Why? What’s with The Briefcase? What exactly happened last night?"

Dash: "You already know, Guy."

Guy: "Last night, I saw a light."

Dash: "You’ve known for years. You will know. You know."

Guy: "What? You’re talking in riddles."

Dash: "Your destiny is tied to it—just like mine."

Guy: "Tied to what?"

Dash: "The alien invasion."

Guy: "Oh. Really."

Dash: "It hasn’t happened yet. Well, it is happening now, but you’re still blinded by linearity, so I’ll talk in your terms of ‘past’ and ‘future.’"

Dash sounded condescending when he used air quotes for "past" and "future." After all, from Guy’s perspective, the notions of past, present and future seemed perfectly logical and sequential — certainly not outdated.

Dash: "Maybe I should tell you my story. Because I was once like you—a linear thinker. A ‘linearist.’"

There were those air quotes again.

Dash went into his background story:

One day, he is riding his bike to his bank job …

Guy: "Did your bike have a chain then?"

Dash: "It’s not important."

Guy: "Did it?"

Dash: "Yes."

… so, Dash is rolling downhill, picking up speed, headlong into a busy intersection … when he notices a transport truck barreling toward him …

Guy: "Was it a Mack truck? Kenworth? Freightliner?"

Dash: "I don’t know my trucks. Let me tell the story."

Guy: "Sorry."

Dash: "Peterbilt. It was a Peterbilt truck."

… just as the Peterbilt truck is about to mow down Dash, there’s a white hot flash of light … and suddenly Dash is at least two decades older, in his fifties, white-haired but still strong like a yeti, watching television … it’s a TV show about flying monkeys …

Guy: "Flying monkeys? Whoa! Prophetic or what?"

Dash: "Not prophetic in the least. Strictly speaking, it’s not a prophecy when it’s already happening. And ‘you’" — air quotes — "already knew it is happening."

Guy: "Oh. Then what about The Briefcase?"

Dash: "I’m getting to that."

… so sixty-ish Dash gets up, turns off the TV and starts leafing through the Winter 2025 edition of The Journal of Tantric Yoga, when, suddenly, he notices a tall dark figure in a cape and a Zorro mask in his kitchen … the man wearing the Zorro mask explains that he’s a time-travelling assassin … that he and other likeminded caped crusaders belong to "The Assassins League Contra Temporal Pettifoggery and Alien Invasion" …

Guy: "What’s pettifoggery?"

Dash: "Okay, think of bad things done by dishonest people, like cheaters, charlatans and lawyers. But you should stay focused on the alien invasion part."

Guy: "Uh-huh."

Dash: "Pettifoggery is merely means to an end. The end being alien invasion. The Assassins League is first and foremost about preventing alien invasion. Alien invasion is always on the verge of happening."

Guy: "So, alien invasion is always around the next corner?"

Dash: "Constant threat."

… the time-traveling assassin in the Zorro mask then tells Dash about temporal vortexes and wormholes … about how there are a limited number of them … about The Assassins League’s mission to collect and contain all temporal vortexes so as to keep them out of alien clutches … contain and protect vortexes in specially-constructed briefcases … about how the aliens use temporal vortexes to gain control over human destinies … about how The Assassins League’s mission is also about assassinating alien leaders and the human quislings who serve their cause …

Guy: "So, Zorro gave you one of the temporal vortexes for safe-keeping, right?"

Dash: "Exactly. I knew you’d start remembering."

Guy: "Yeah, I think it’s coming back to me—"

Dash: "Now you’re faking it."

Guy: "Okay, sorry. But you’re a member of The Assassins League Contra Temporal Pettifoggery and Alien Invasion, eh?"

Dash: "Yes. But we assassins prefer the acronym T-A-L-C-T-P-A-I, because it’s catchier. Or simply, The Assassins League."

Guy: "The cape comes included with Assassins League membership?"

Dash: "An assassin is nothing without his cape."

Guy: "So what happened when you opened the temporal vortex last night?"

Dash: "It’s a passageway to another temporal zone."

Guy: "What happened to those tough guys?"

Dash: "They went off—"

Guy: "—someplace?"

Dash: "—more like, some time."

Guy: "But they’re okay, right?"

Dash: "I doubt it. Low testosterone levels. I could smell it."

Break time was nearly over, and it was time for Guy and Dash to work the phones again. That prompted Guy to switch themes slightly.

Guy: "Say, you ever use the vortex for your own selfish purposes. You know, like, for meeting chicks or getting a better job?"

Dash: "Sure I did, but never again. I always end up in terrible jobs selling insurance."

Guy: "Ever score an interesting job?"

Dash: "Roman emperor once. But that was a fluke, timing-wise."

Guy: "Roman Empire?"

Dash: "Stag film."

Guy: "How about meeting girls?"

At that point, some giggling teenaged girls in parkas passed by Dash, blushing and saying their hellos to him. Dash flashed his black almond eyes alluringly.

Dash: "As you can see" — he grinned like a yeti bandito who’s doing just fine with the girls — "I do alright."

Guy: "But, man, that’s quite a heavy responsibility you carry."

Dash: "It’s my mission. My destiny. I protect humanity against alien invasion and temporal pettifoggery."

Guy: "So, you’re The Protector."

Dash: "I am The Protector."

At that point, a supervisor and the field marshal entered the break room to give Guy and Dash a stern dressing down.

Supervisor: "What are you clowns still doing on break? We’ve got a whole bunch of landed immigrants who’d be happy to have your jobs. And they’d probably be more productive and efficient than you jokers!"

Field marshal: "Time is money."

Guy and Dash returned to work. Their productivity that shift was nothing to write home about.

Next shift, the following evening, Dash was absent.

In fact, Dash never returned to DeMens Market Research, Inc.

Guy asked some supervisors, and eventually the field marshal, what happened to Dash. But they had no memory of the employee, or the man. There was no record of a Dashiell Samuel ever having worked at DeMens or any of its affiliated call centres, even the ones in Bangalore.

The shift after that, Guy had no memory of Dash.

And Guy forgot Dash, completely.

For the time.