The Circle

The snow kept falling. It was like a blanket. Liam stared out the window, snuggled up in his favorite blanket. He was lucky enough to have brought it, and it was his only company during the blizzard. 

The office was eerie, with its vast hallways quiet without any bustling people. 

Liam took a sip of his coffee, careful not to burn his lips. He leaned back in his chair and placed his feet on his desk, surveying the room. He laughed out loud, tempted to go to his manager’s office and do the same. 

It was ironic, really. No, it was more like a twist of luck. His manager had warned him about his low productivity, and Liam had decided to come to office on the weekend, requesting the manager for the key: But he had gotten trapped inside by the blizzard. He had dismissed the warning at first as a small snowfall that the meteorologists were exaggerating about. 

So there he was-all due to his ego-the only person on the 3-floor bank building. 

He got up and walked around, switching the TV on. He could do as he pleased.

“And now, back to the town of Allentown, which is currently buried under 10 inches of snow! Workers are working around the clock to clear the roads, but it keeps falling. The cold weather has also led to ice forming on several roads, and our sources say that there have already been 4 accidents. And now back to the…” and the news reporter went on and on.

Liam sighed, turning the TV off. He looked out the window, where piles of snow sat at the entrance of the building. He could see the tire marks of the snowplows that had been through half an hour ago-which were being buried under the fresh layer of snow. 

He walked around on his floor, sipping his coffee, careful not to take too much in at once. 

But after working for some time, he didn’t have any coffee left. Liam started feeling drowsy. He looked back outside, and the sun was nowhere near setting. It was noon, and he wouldn’t be budging anytime soon. When would he be able to leave the office building? There wasn’t a coffee machine on his floor, and Liam threw up his hands, exasperated. 

Maybe there was a machine on another floor? 

Liam set off on his quest to the lower floors, where the more lucrative matters took place. The second floor was full of the average client services and mortgage specialist desks. Liam peered at the figures on the pages strewn around, which were way out of his range. But to his dismay, there was no coffee machine.

So he headed down one more floor, panting. It was the ground floor-but it wasn’t open to the public. Liam didn’t know much about the place, having only heard a few rumors. Supposedly there wasn’t anything that important there. It was just where many bank officials had their overflow files. Nothing too important, he had heard. Just a little bit of money, probably amounting to 20 grand. 

He headed down, and upon first glance, it looked like a regular old office building. The same whitewashed walls, overflowing files everywhere, a few vending machines, and dirty corners. 

But Liam ignored it all, eyeing the only thing that mattered. The coffee machine. There it was-sitting long neglected in the corner. 

He headed over and got himself a fresh brew, steaming hot. 

As he headed out, one more thing caught his attention- a simple paper that had been printed by the printer. It was sitting there in the output tray, and the paper itself looked like a joke. It was a simple black circle. 

Liam looked at it curiously. Was this what they had reduced his salary for. To print circles? He took the paper and placed it on the desk. How peculiar. He tried seeing if the paper had some hidden message, or some form of indication that it just simply wasn’t a circle. 

He knew he was getting ahead of himself, though. Stumped, he placed his thermos on the circle- which, to his surprise, disappeared through the circle, falling to the floor with a clang.

Bewildered, he crouched next to the Circle. It was two dimensional. Where did the thermos go?

He stood there, replaying what he had just seen. So… He had placed the thermos on the circle, hadn’t he? Then the thermos went through the table!

“I’m going to regret this,” Liam said, hovering his hand over the Circle. He reached in, and to his amazement, even though he was expecting it, his hand appeared through the bottom side of the table. 

The back hole blazed with a ring of light on the bottom side of the table, and Liam stuck his other hand through the opposite way. 

Interesting. So the Circle worked both ways.

He stood there for a moment, taking it all in. So, this black circle was like a teleportation hole. It could go through anything, in both directions. 

So what practical use did the Circle have?

He scrambled over to the vending machines that lined the wall. Securing the paper to the glass of the display door, he stuck his other hand in. To his surprise, he could see it emerging on the other side of the glass. 

He clasped a Snickers bar, and pulled it though. 

And then, as if to test if it was a legitimate bar, he sank his teeth into it. Yup, it was. 

He laughed at the discarded wrapper, which read the company slogan: “You're not you when you're hungry.”

True. He wasn’t being himself. And he was hungry- for the possibilities the paper held. 

He was becoming giddy with excitement. 

He walked out of the room, and surveyed it again. His eyes fell on a desolate vault in the corner, which was a money reserve. He ignored it, but then realization struck his face. 

In anticipation, he ran up and held up the paper to the vault door. This was the final test. 

He stuck his hand inside, and felt it clamp around something paper-like… money.

He pulled his hand out, and to his joy, it was a stack of bills. 

Hungry for more, he stuck his hand inside yet again. He kept churning out more and more piles, and there were some areas where he could feel more money waiting for him. It was just that they were out of his reach. 

Liam sat back, contemplating what to do. His heartbeat was racing, and he was just too giddy with the thought of how much money he had in his hands. Imagine the look on his wife’s face!

But he knew that he wanted to empty the vault. There was more money there, waiting for him. 

And then he had an idea.

He grabbed a piece of tape and hastily taped the paper to the vault door. There. The Circle was pretty large, having been printed on a construction sized paper. 

Gingerly, he turned on his phone light and climbed into the Circle, bursting from excitement. And there it was: stack of bills and gold nuggets, which made him scream with joy. The contents of the vault were far more than 20 grand. 

He then hastily threw the nuggets and bills back out the Circle, sure that they would be lying there for him on the other side after he got out. 

But little did he know. The tape’s grip on the paper was loosening. But Liam worked on, unaware. 

And at last, the tape had lost its strength. It was the subject to hasty work and improper thinking; and mostly, greed.

And it was too late. The paper had drifted to the ground as it lost its adhesiveness, and Liam banged on the vault walls(which barely shook), his voice muffled. Nobody would find him until the blizzard would pass and the employees came back.

He was alone. Probably never to be found. Who knew when the employees would come back?

And as he sat there in solitude, with no food or air, Liam understood his mistake.

“The highest wealth is the absence of greed.”