*4*

After the meeting to discuss the company move, Bob's head was spinning. It wasn't from the bureaucracy of box labeling, organization, chair labeling and timelines, but from the psychics of the whole thing. A major change in place, environment and lifestyles. Everybody was bucking for a better office, a small increment of aesthetic. It was like a bunch of soccer nuts running up and down the field, positioning for an easy shot, though the game would end in a scoreless tie. Somehow Bob felt he got tagged to coordinate the whole damn thing psychically. He would need assistance. Something both physical and metaphysical... like a talisman.

After work, he drove down to the beach. He would find something here, at one of the hippie shops. He parked in his usual spot, a residential neighborhood several blocks from the waterfront, and walked down to the Psychic Gallery. He smelled incense inside, and his ears filled with sparkling soft music. Bells and Tantric fabrics hung from the ceiling, and water flowed over backlit rocks in a fountain. Bob glanced around inside. Crystals, incense, paraphernalia and jars of herbs; mystics unveiled souls behind red curtains. He walked over to a panel displaying odds and ends.

Ah. Here it is. The one-inch square plastic pin had a diffraction grating that made a myriad of rainbows, fifty rainbow spots, that swirled and shifted as you angled the plastic. He brought the pin to the cashier and paid four dollars.

Outside the store, Bob removed the talisman from the paper bag, crumpled the bag into a trash basket and clipped the pin onto his pants pocket. Time to charge it up. He walked down the street, careful to cover the plastic reflector with his shirt. He headed toward the beach.

Bob walked out and sat on the sand. He opened up his powers with a prayer. Lord, please allow this talisman to help me carry the soul of Aurora to its new location. The pin glistened in the sun.

God instructed Bob on how to use the combination of his brain and the plastic to move the soul of the company, and instructed him on ecclesiastic demeanor and the ethereal subtleties. Bob opened up the book of quotations he always carried and read: God made the world from the void, but the void shows through.

He smiled inwardly to himself, stood, placed the plastic pin back inside his pants pocket and walked back to his car.

When Bob arrived in the parking garage, he pinned the plastic talisman to the outside of his pants pocket. Standing in the lobby, waiting for an elevator, he trickle-charged the talisman. It seems to absorb fairly well, stable, mostly unnoticeable.

When he got off the elevator at his floor he noticed a conspicuous amount of hustle and bustle: people who seemed upset at cleaning out drawers, sorting through old documents, separating wheat from chaff. Many of them were concerned about how things would settle in, what would change, and how the new seating would be arranged.

He sat at his desk and started working... more quiet trickle charging. Strangely, Bob wasn't quite sure what, exactly, he was collecting in the talisman. It was, well, the spirit of the spirit. The talisman began to subliminally vibrate with the collected void. Bob put his hands behind his head and leaned back to stretch. This is working, but it seems to be too slow. Trying to collect a waterfall with a thimble.

Bob placed the talisman inside his pocket and gently gripped it with his hand. Time to charge it up a bit. He walked around the building, as if he had something to do, somewhere to go. He grabbed the feng-shui from the walls, the pictures, the cubicles, the corners of the rooms. He channeled it, slowly, carefully, into the talisman. It pulsed in his pocket. It swirled with the collected energy.

Bob, psychically exhausted from the process, went back to sit down at his desk, the talisman still invisibly sparking inside, trembling. There's still more to do, Bob realized. The whole environment of the building, actually. Hmm. This was a much bigger job than he had realized. He would need help.