Employee Makes Daring Escape Bid

Is there no end to their usefulness?

Beleaguered mang Hans Fruck jumped from the roof of the Publishing Inc cafeteria today.

In an original and eyebrow-raising move, Fruck's leap was not a suicide attempt but a daring escape bid. With a cable woven entirely of paperclips attached to his ankle and secured to a trestle table, and with a polystyrene helmet with a (paperclip) chinstrap set at a jaunty angle, Fruck saluted the rooftop loiterers with customary brio.

According to observers, Fruck delivered a long, garbled monologue before jumping. "He compared himself to a gerbil... Or compared us to gerbils," commented a perplexed Deidre Norman. "I'm not sure... gerbils seemed to feature heavily anyway, as did vanilla milkshakes and Jennifer Garner."

Norman turned to fellow ed, Nell Yanni for confirmation. "Listen, I didn't really pay much attention," said Yanni. "I just looked up to see what all the shouting was about, then went back to reading my fashion liftout."

"Well, whatever," resumed Norman. "But I'm pretty sure Hans jumping was intended to draw attention to the plight of gerbils. He also made pointed comments about Richard Gere. And--" Norman paused and scratched her head "--he kept mentioning something about a sausage factory?

"I don't know," said Norman. "It happened so quickly. Evidently, some people got fed up with Hans's harangue and started pelting him with Reconciliation Muffins." After sustaining various muffin-related injuries—"The chocolate chips are quite hard, they'd really sting if they were thrown hard enough," commented one observer—Fruck then shouted (somewhat irrelevantly): "See you in hell, you fools!" before launching himself from the rooftop.

Sitting at her desk, fellow ed Wilson Wilson was looking out the window at the precise moment of Fruck's leap for freedom. A startled Wilson saw Fruck flash past the window of ME Susan Barrett's cubicle. "It was strange," mused Wilson. "I was just daydreaming a little, looking wistfully at all that sunlight, when Hans appeared outside the window like an apparition.

"He wasn't there for very long—he was probably already doing 50-feet-per-second—but somehow that one fleeting glimpse summed him up for me. I think he tried to give an ironic, devil-may-care wave as he passed Level Three," said Wilson. "Unfortunately, his hand got tangled up in all those paperclips and, well, all that panicked flailing rather ruined the effect."

In a cruel twist, Fruck actually achieved touchdown before things started to go awry. Despite advanced mathematical calculations, Fruck had failed to take into account the surprising whiplash effect of the interlinked paperclips. The despairing mang managed to clutch only a few blades of Parker Street nature strip before being catapaulted skyward, back toward the PI rooftop.

"I was still staring out the window, recovering from my surprise at seeing Hans plummet past the window the first time, when he appeared again," said Wilson, shaking her head. "Going in the other direction.

"We actually made eye-contact," continued Wilson. "He didn't seem very happy. He was shouting something. At first, I couldn't make it out--"

Having unleashed the surprising elastical and torsional powers of paperclips, Fruck was flung about the Parker Street exterior of the PI building in a windscreen-wiper-like motion for at least 10 minutes following his ill-fated jump.

"It was quite distracting. All that thumping and howling," commented Urals ed, Susie Shwartzer.

"Shocking bad language," confirmed fellow ed Karen Johns.

"It was hypnotic," said Wilson. "Hans' initial up-down trajectory changed to a side-to-side motion. Every few seconds he would swing past Susan's window. Of course, when Susan was there, Hans swung past making birdlike, flapping motions. I'm not sure," said Wilson frowning. "But I think he was trying to be unobtrusive."

"He kept shouting and gesticulating," confirmed Shwartzer. "He was a bit emotional, so it was hard to make out exactly what he was saying."

"Yes," agreed Wilson. "All that flapping and fist-shaking made it hard to understand him. But eventually Susie, Karen and I managed to make out what he was saying..."

"It was all a bit strange," Wilson paused and sipped some water. "It appears Hans was trying to place his lunch order," Wilson continued. "He kept shouting it over and over again, and he looked quite angry about it. He was shouting: 'Help, Thai Fish Curry!'

"Well," continued Wilson, "he was getting so animated that I rung ahead to the cafeteria and placed the order. When Susan wasn't looking, I tried to communicate this to Hans via hand-signals each time he swung past, but I'm not sure he understood me, because he still seemed very unhappy."

"Of course, I'm not sure what Hans was on about. He never collected the Thai Fish Curry—and I'm certainly not paying for it!" Wilson said emphatically. "We even tried putting a plate of curry on the rooftop, trying to coax Hans back up. It didn't work."

"I still see Hans swing past the window occasionally," said Wilson nostalgically. "And he still demands Thai Fish Curry. Strange boy."

"I hardly notice it anymore when he flies past the window. Quite frankly, it's old-hat now," said a distinctly unimpressed Johns.

"Well, I see Hans every now and then—when I remember to look up as I'm walking along Parker Street," said Wilson. "Of course, he's a lot thinner these days. But he seems happy enough, perched up there on the 'B' in the Publishing Inc sign. If I remember, I wave. He always shouts, and waves back." Perched on his 'O', Fruck observed the comings-and-goings of his erstwhile colleagues. Occasionally, he is accosted by a curious pigeon. He seldom bothered to jump down on his paperclip safety rope anymore. Malnourished and glassy-eyed, he only stirred into activity when he saw Wilson, Shwartzer or Johns pass on the footpath below. On these occasions, he staggered to his feet, and weakly shook his fist at them. They waved back.

Days passed. And as his health failed, the disconsolate and B-bound Fruck repeated the same thing, over and over again: "Help me, fucking hurry! Help me, fucking hurry! Help me--" This monologue was interrupted only occasionally—when he wrinkled his nose at the strange but persistent aroma of Thai Fish Curry.

Epilogue

While loitering on the rooftop for a furtive mid-afternoon cigarette, former cartographer Cecelia Woods noticed a strange chain of rusted paperclips attached to the leg of one of the trestle tables. Absent-mindedly, Woods removed the paperclip chain. She watched as the chain slid over the building edge.

She didn't hear the howl or the dull thud that followed.