In a dim and foggy corner of almost Heaven, we see a hardworking, earnest agent of goodness bent over his desk. His office space is crowded with filing cabinets and bulging boxes of who knows what, obscured by puffy foggy clouds. His phone rings [Ringtone: Clay Aiken sings "Don't Save It All for Christmas Day"] and he picks up:
"Marley the Ghost! What's your favorite color?" Marley jots down the information cheerfully. "Ooo, good one. 'Rainbow.' Ha! Well, thank you. Got it. And Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/Season's Greetings and all to you, etc., etc." Marley rips the note from the pad and goes to the array of overstuffed boxes and file cabinets, cramming the new information into a folder and shoving it back into a drawer. He struggles to get the drawer shut again. Through the clouds, he spies two familiar figures leaning in the doorway watching him.
"You're gonna need a bigger metaphor, Mr. Jordan!"
"You may be right, darling Marley," Jordan says with a twinkle in his eye. "These security questions for cloud storage are tedious and overwhelming, but your fellow Earthlings are just trying to protect themselves. We're working on shifting paradigms."
Marley blinks vacantly and notices Angel Clarence by Jordan's side. "Oh, Mr. Clarence, I didn't recognize you!"
Clarence steps into the less-cluttered center of Marley's office. He is no longer garbed in his usual white AngelWear gown with the ruched bodice and sweetheart neckline. Instead, he is wearing a natty charcoal suit with subtle pinstripes, lengthening his lithe figure. "Howdy doody, Marley! It's meeeee!" Clarence twirls, Jordan twinkles, and Marley blinks.
"Our sweet Clarence has earned a promotion," Jordan says proudly. "He is to be your mentor as we send you on your first salvation!"
Marley blinks again. "But I thought I already saved old Ebenezer. That whole time-traveling three-ghost thing was my idea--"
"Now, Biff," Jordan chides. "Don't start taking credit for the work of the powers that Be. Mr. Dickens, as you well know, was the author of that tale. Editors are not authors."
"Yes, Mr. Jordan. I'm sorry, Mr. Jordan. I only meant-- Yes, Chief! At your service!"
"That's better." Jordan shimmers between his two direct reports and angelically wraps his arms around their shoulders. "Now, sweet Clarence, please brief our darling Marley on his rescue mission."
Clarence retrieves a device from his vest pocket, enters his password, and begins scrolling through his apps--Bullies and Belligerents. Egos and Eccentrics. Hubris and Chutzpah. He taps on Misers and Misfits.
"This time of year, it's awfully hard to choose. So many souls left behind," Clarence says with a wan sigh. "I thought this one might interest you, Mr. Jordan. See the similarities with Mr. Marley's old pal Ebenezer?"
"Miss Van Pelt clearly demonstrates an unhealthy love of nickels, nickels, nickels that jingle jangle."
Mr. Jordan reviews the case file uploaded in the surrounding clouds, using a gestural interface activated by the sweep of his grand angelic wing. "Indeed, love of money does have a motivating but not terribly influential pull on this subject," Jordan scrutinizes. "I believe she did have another dearer wish, however." Jordan sweeps his wing so that both Clarence and Marley could see:
"Ah, love!" Clarence exclaims.
"Right, love!" Marley exclaims. "Everyone wants love. Did she ever capture that boy she was so sweet on? What was his name--Schroeder, right?"
Mr. Jordan smiles. "Yes, there was our friend Schroeder. Artistic type, you know." Clarence and Marley blink. "Musician... loves Beethoven." Clarence and Marley blink at each other. "He was the catcher on Charlie Brown's team."
Marley clears his throat. "I'm never sure when you're being literal."
"Not important," Mr. Jordan replies kindly. "Actually, Miss Van Pelt said herself what she always wanted: Real estate. But more than that, her endeavors to attract young Schroeder, to appoint herself the Christmas Queen, to taunt good ol' Charlie Brown with a perpetually thwarted placekick--all these actions demonstrate that she also desired not love, but attention."
"And didn't she get what she wanted? I mean the real estate and the attention?" Clarence asks, sweeping his own wing grandly across the cloudy interface. "I see big buildings, skyscrapers, casinos, and--oh, my, is that the White House? Good-NESS! Our little Lucy became quite the Trump!"
Jordan laughs mirthlessly. "Are you kidding? Lucy sends Trump out for cigarettes."
Marley points at a troubling scene in the Lucy case cloud. "Could I see this part again, please, Sir?"
Jordan embraces Marley proudly. "Yes, yes, my dear soul. Your instincts about human nature are much improved. There is such an overlap in belligerence and hubris, we really need to reorganize our files. Tell me, dear Marley. What made you stop on this episode?"
Marley fishes for his own insights. "Well, it had to do with Clarence's new suit. Vintage Forties. Black and white. Christmas time, too, but with friend Kris involved somehow."
Clarence brightens up and sweeps his wings across the clouds in the room to reveal another tinkerer in the psychiatric arts:
"Sawyer!" Clarence exclaims. "I remember him. Tom Sawyer's great-great grandson. He did have a mischievous streak. Look at him now--a bundle of nerves."
Marley can barely contain his excitement. "Can I help him, please Mr. Jordan? And can I ... can I have a nice suit like Clarence's?"
Jordan smiles and twinkles and waves his grand angelic wings. Clarence and Marley are black-and-whited down to Christmas on 34th Street, nattily attired as befitting businessmen of the day. Marley struggles with an unexpected burden, as he still must bear the chains he forged in life. Thanks to his prior puttings right of things once gone wrong, however, his chains are fewer and lighter than during his Scrooge redemption episode.
As Marley and Clarence enter Mr. Sawyer's office in the famed Macy's department store, Marley's remaining chains clink and clang loudly, startling the mortal.
"Who rang that bell?" Sawyer snarls petulantly. "Can't you read the sign? 'Bell Out of Order. Please Knock.'" Clarence and Marley look at each other in wonder.
"He can't hear us, can he?" Marley asks. Clarence shakes his head. Sawyer continues examining the employee records on his desk, his eyes wandering suspiciously around the room to see where that chain-rattling noise keeps coming from. "Should we appear to him now? I hate all this sneaking around, just showing up in door knockers and what-not."
"You might be right, Mr. Marley. It's your call." Marley nods, and Clarence grandly sweeps his wings to effect the revelation, knocking poor Sawyer in the head. He recovers quickly and squeals with childlike delight upon seeing Marley's chains.
"Oooo!" Sawyer exclaims. "Looky! Well-forged, my good man. Well-forged!" Sawyer hesitantly fingers the chains. "May I? Oh, lovely work. Good stainless, superior nickel content, if I'm not mistaken. Where did you get it?"
"This is the chain I forged in life," Marley intones ghostily. "I'm pretty sure you've got one going yourself."
"Awesome! Well, now, please have a seat. We'll get started with your tests."
Watching from above, Jordan presses pause on the scene. "You need a little more backstory here, dear ones," Jordan whispers. "Observe, if you please, that nervous gesture. What does it tell you?"
"He really needs something to do with his hands," Marley offers insightfully.
"That's IT!" Clarence cheers.
"Yes, indeed," Jordan confirms. He sweeps his wings to change the scene once again to Sawyer's childhood after-school job at the local junk yard.
"That's SCRAP yard," Sawyer corrects. "Wait a minute, who said that?"
Together, Jordan, Marley, and Clarence watch as young Sawyer happily wanders through a large warehouse full of junk-- er, scrap: stuff discarded by a populace flawed by their failure of imagination. "Ferrous, nonferrous, alloys, and fibers! E-scrap and baling straps, and mixed bulky rigids!"
Sawyer reaches into a box of Christmas tree lights, his eyes aglow (behind his protective goggles) with visions of copper cuttings dancing in his head. "Ooo, I know I can make something special out of this. The kitchen for a doll's house, maybe, or the control console on a rocket ship to Mars! Someday, Mr. Macy will buy my repurposed materials-for-toys idea. It's the only sustainable way to future Christmases."
Marley peers over at Jordan's CloudVision screen to peek ahead in the story. "What happened to the young man's dreams?"
"He should have gone to dental school," Clarence mumbles.
Jordan smiles patiently as he angel-wing-swipes the scene again. A cloudy mist obscures a blank slate. "Mr. Marley, my dear, where do we take poor Mr. Sawyer's story from here? No help, Clarence!"
Clarence shuffles his feet in embarrassment, a feeling of helpless incompetence that dissipates as he examines his smartly polished Oxfords with aesthetic appreciation. "There's always cobbling. Or, shoe making, they call it now."
Ignoring Clarence's distracted remarks, Marley thinks a moment. He reviews Sawyer's psychological profile: nervous, fidgety, needing to be correct in the face of strong opposing opinions. And yet, also demonstrating a strong desire to help people, to fix their problems. "The problem with that, though," Marley explains slowly so Clarence, too, could follow, "is he keeps trying to fix things--people--who aren't broken."
"That's right," Jordan says with a sigh. "Mr. Macy saw potential in him, despite rejecting dear Mr. Sawyer's recycled toy idea, and placed him--misplaced him, rather--in HR. This history must be altered."
Marley thinks a little harder. Clarence's offhanded remark about dentistry calls another Christmas story to mind. There was that elf, Hermey, who also felt misplaced in his role, a misunderstood misfit in the toy world.
Misfit. Toys. Misfit. Toys. "Misfit Toys!" Marley, Clarence, and Jordan exclaim as one. "Even Kris would approve of that idea," Jordan confirms.
With a group swipe of the CloudVision monitor, the merry gang envision a new future for misguided misfit Mr. Sawyer. He is brought to the Island of Misfit Toys, where the citizens--recognizing his natural gift for materials identification and impulse to fix broken things--name him their Wizard of Refurbished Toys, Deluxe. Times being what they are, he accepts the job.
As the thunderous cheers subside, Jordan returns with his direct reports to Marley's cloudy office, pondering their next mission. As Clarence has noted, there are so many souls left behind in this special time of year. Whom shall we save next?
A face begins to take form in the CloudVision screen. Clarence and Marley anxiously wait to see who it might be... The face is youthful, freckled, and oddly vicious looking.
Clarence gasps. "He has yellow eyes! So help me God, yellow eyes!"
Marley laughs. "Tag, Scut Farcas! You're it."
The End.
Love, hosaa
Repurposing plots
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