Introduction to Zinc
Zinc felt out of place. He was on an elevator beginning it’s descent from the 24th floor of a nondescript midtown office building, crowded with business people and customers of business people, He wasn’t interested in business, on either end of the deal, and his casual dress didn’t hide the fact. Why he was even in this office building was a bit of a mystery to him. Sometimes life just sends you off on a journey, the purpose of which is sometimes revealed later on. There was a phone call from an old friend, an invitation to lunch which was ultimately stood up, no doubt the victim of a meeting running over or overbooked schedule.
Zinc’s awkward moment was not unusual. Moments like these started before he was born, when Mom and Dad Smith, both in their early thirties, discovered that their combined six degrees in the physical sciences did not adequately prepare them for family planning. For the Smiths, even the most elementary steps in the long complex process of giving birth and raising a progeny was handled like a delicate chemical reaction. Thus, when it came time to assign a name to their new family entity, it seemed obvious to Dad at least, that the forthcoming spawn would need to be resilient in a caustic world, able to alloy with many different kinds of people, and able to be polished to a bright finish. Thus, he would have all of the characteristics of the base metal Zinc and so, “Zinc Smith” it was.
From that point forward, Zinc’s life was a series of emergent situations to which he was uncannily and sometime unwittingly responsive. Thus, when the elevator leading him away from his truncated lunch arrangement came to a lurching stop midway between the 24th and 23rd floor and the power to the lights, not to mention the “call for help” button was similarly extinguished, only Zinc was dressed appropriately (or had the inclination) for the task of climbing through the service panel in the ceiling and operating the manual override to the door, which provided the escape path for the other elevatees. In the ensuing confusion, Zinc slipped down the stairs and blended into the noonday crowds, never to be identified as the one who came to the rescue of a handful of important people marooned in an elevator on the 23rd floor of a nondescript midtown office building.
TBC…
