“One”
Ugly.
“Two”
Dude.
“Three”
Pretty.
“Four”
Ugly.

I want to get three.
Ms. Clemmens continues counting down the row, appointing us to our assigned groups. The classroom let out a collective moan. I dodn't join them, the fools. In my own mind I speed down the isle much faster – 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3... I'm three! Ms. Clemmens, you angel! God surely has blessed her with the gift of province.

“One”
Funny.
“Two”
Funny looking.
“Three”
Hot.
“Four”
Guy.

I need to get three. I stare at Dude 2 and Guy 4, wincing with pity. If only they knew they were playing a game of roulette when taking their seats this morning. When a teacher decides to do the old “count off”, sitting near the girl you like will only get you burned. I'm too smart, and too charred to let that happen anymore.

“One”
Fat.
“Two”
Meh.
“Three”
Oh my god, no.
“Four”
NO!

I'm not getting three.For whatever reason, Ms. Clemmens has decided to count the unorthodox way of front, to back, to back, to front. What kind of a sick monster would count that way? Everyone knows you start over at the top of the row once you reach the end. It's basic math! Is the extra hand movement too much for the dying old hag? She hates me.

“One”

No time. I already know I have to be in three, but how? I quickly do the devil's new arithmetic in my head. Four, I'm four. Just one off from salvation. I need to fix the order of things back to where they were. I have time to switch seats with the pizza face in front of me, but will he comply? No. Hot and Pretty are going to be wasted on this bum. No one likes me enough here to switch seats with me, yet. If this was the end of the semester, the tool in front of me would be putty in my hands, and his seat, mine. But that's the problem. No one likes me until they get to know me, and in this world, nothing's making them. Almost nothing, which is why I treasure assigned seating and the like. Freedoms give people the ability to wander off on their own, often away from everyone else. It's a life sentence of loneliness to anyone too socially inept to wander after others.

“Four”

I feel my forehead with my hand as if the word could leave a welt, but one more won't kill me. I'm sure I can make some use of Ugly and Guy. They'll frown at my bluntness, yell at me, but eventually laugh too. Their disgust will turn to endearment, and they will wander closer.

Supposedly a Day Like Any Other

Well, it's a day like any other, I suppose. Just cooped up in the office with the other hens. The manager is out for the afternoon, which obviously meant no work is to be done from here until clock-out. I sift through my email one last time before I start procrastinating with my fellow coworkers. Tom, who sits right next to me, has already been playing Minesweeper for the past hour.

It's not that we didn't care about our jobs: we do care. About our jobs. About having jobs. Really, I'm just interested in the check that comes in every other week. Does that mean I don't care about my job? Does anyone truly care about their job? Only those that do volunteer work can tout such a claim, and I'm not going to pretend I'm making spreadsheets out of the goodness of my heart. I think the only reason any of us are here is because we were offered enough green pieces of paper to make it seem reasonable to sacrifice a portion of our free time.

"You okay there?" Tom asks. He had finished his game while I was lost in thought.

"Uh, yeah... yes," I meekly reply. Tom has a gleam in his eye. "What's that look for?"

Tom reaches into his pocket and retrieves a small flash drive. "I found this outside on one of the benches. It holds two gigabytes!"

I stare in disbelief. "I didn't know they even made them that big." He hands it to me and I verify the shiny sticker screaming 2GB on it. "Do you know who this belongs to?"

"Nah, it was just, you know, sitting there," Tom responds. "... I didn't steal it or nothin'," he quickly states, as though I were accusing him of foul play. "I figured I would take it before, you know, some real thief came along."

"There might be something on here that says who it belongs to," I say more to myself than to Tom. This thing must be pretty valuable, after all, and whoever its owner is must miss it. I begin to move it to my computer's Universal Serial Bus port when Tom's hand stops mine.

"Wait," he says. "You know it's against company policy to use flash media on company computers."

"Oh, come now," I grin, "the people that made that policy don't even know how computers work. Besides, would you want to get caught taking this thing home?" I hold it up to him as if he had forgotten what it was.

"Err." Tom pauses for a moment, and I know I have him on the ropes. "Alright, but we're just checking to see who it belongs to, right?"

"Yeah, ten seconds tops," I remark as I plug the peripheral into my machine. I hear the familiar sound play from the computer detecting new media, and I eagerly navigate to My Computer. To our surprise and dismay, the new media that came up was not for a flash drive of two gigabytes, but one of the more typical 16 megabytes. We both stare in disappointment as reality catches up with us.

Tom is the first to break the silence. "Well, I guess we should have figured. It's basically impossible to get that much storage on something as small as a thumb drive." He had a point: there was no reason we should have expected it to be real.

I begin navigating through the files on the stick. "There are a lot of random files on here, some that don't even have extensions," I say to Tom. "I've opened them in Notepad but it's all gibberish." Tom was staring blankly at me, and I realized I knew far more about how Windows worked than he does. "I think they're encoded or compressed or something," I continue, "You know, to make them smaller."

"Yeah, makes sense," Tom nods along. "So who does it belong to?"

"To whom does it belong?" Someone behind us corrects. I nearly jump out of my seat as I turn around to see Susan, a fellow coworker who I've had somewhat of a crush on. Or rather, whom I've had a crush on. On whom I've had a crush? I can't think straight when I'm around her. Tom and I had both shown interest in the past, but it's pretty clear she likes me more. I haven't gotten the nerve to ask her out yet, but I feel like today is the day. "What are you two doing?" She asks inquisitively.

"Nothing," Tom replies, perhaps too quickly, as he slides toward my computer to conceal the flash drive. After an awkward silence, he follows up with, "What are you doing?"

"Well," Susan starts, "I finished the Fall reports and I'm waiting on some resources from the marketing team, so I don't really have anything to do at the moment."

I try to think of something to say, but my mind is still on the flash drive. I turn back to my computer to close the window, when I suddenly recognize a file extension: JPG. A jpeg! It could very well be a picture of the owner. Immediately forgetting my audience, I double-click the file and the Windows Image Preview opens in full screen.

---

After a long and drawn-out interrogation process on the previous day's events, my manager finally begins the speech he had prepared to say since I walked in the office. He wasn't interested in hearing my side of the story, so I don't understand why we had to have such a long conversation in the first place.

"Don't act like you weren't responsible," he says to me. "Our company has a strict policy on viewing pornographic materials at the workplace. Normally I would try to cover for you and arrange for you to attend classes addressing these issues, but the fact that you violated this in succession to the rule against using flash drives on corporate machines-"

"Yeah, why does that rule even exist?" I interject. "It's the stupidest thing I've heard."

"It exists for exactly what happened yesterday," he calmly replies.

"What? You guys made a rule expecting that someone would accidentally open a picture of a girl getting DP'd in a swimming pool?"

"No," the manager begins, "that was certainly not anticipated. However, when you plugged the device into the computer, the autorun executed a virus that proceeded to infect our entire intranet, quickly and quietly. For security measures, we need to take down and reformat all end systems on the network, which is going to be a very expensive task." He then begins to list off other fancy technical jargon that I'm not familiar with, but his voice slowly fades away.

I sit quietly, thinking of all the damage I had caused, ultimately from violating a seemingly benign and arbitrary rule. I truly had not realized what "Not Safe For Work" meant.

As I exit the building and walk out into the fresh air, I spot a bench with something taped to it. I walk up and see that it is a note, with only a few words scribbled on it, in Tom's handwriting.

"Susan's mine, bitch."

frist march 2013 life is funy how people r nice. Today mrs. Dunabe gave me a biskit, it tasted good. It was raining and I guess I started this notery or diabook or whatevs becuz mis Dunabe sed if I write down my thunks mybe my eddicatino will improve and I can get a job which would be good. I seen a cat chasing a flutterby and it was funy and I dont like moping. and cleaning and dusting and kids poke fun at me and thats not funy but they laff like its funy. at least mz. Dunabe is at scool and duzznt laff at me, but we laff together at the joke book she has in the class bookshelf. time moves slow.

sekund march 2013 today a man came to my house and sed mrs. Dunabe asked him to meet me and he was wearing a tie and had a funy smell and gave me some money and sed I should try his machine and I did. he had a funy machine in his van and it made me feel warm and shivery up my spine and was metally. and he gave me a test and it was hard so he sed do my best and I did but not much

Third March 2013 I feel...different today. Mayb the machine did something, I dont know but today is sunday so I went to the church and listened but it was looooong and slow. Then I had a biskit and went sleepy tiem but not before the man came again with his machine and funy smell and I did the warm and shivery up my spine and metally thing with electricks and he gave me more money

Fourth March, 2013. Miss Dunabe wasn't at scool today, mayb sick with a sore tummie I guess so I just did my rounds and didn't see any flutterbies becuz it was rainy all poor down so I went home and was cold and wet. The funy smell man came again and gave me another envlope with money and his machine zapped me and made me warm and shivery up my spine with electricks. The day went fast. Then I went to sleep after making bake on on toast.

Fifth March, 2013. Happily, Miss Dunabe was back at school today, much better and she smiled to see me and asked about the man so I told her he zapped me and she laughed and I laughed because the machine zapped me. The clock in the wall of the schoolroom is interesting, because it moves most slowly the closer it is to 5pm. But today it moved fast until 4.45pm and then it was sloooow and I went home but I had a burger first at the burger shop where a nice man with squinty eyes said hello and asked how I was but he spoke a little funny. And the funny smell man again zapped me and again gave me money in an envelope.

Sixth of March, 2013. Interesting is an interesting word, due to its considerable length and syllables. As is considerable. And syllables is just nice to say because of the el and speaking of ells I see on the wall of one of the classrooms where it said el is for lay dee bug. And it had a picture of a ladybug, which was interesting because I hadn't seen a ladybug for a considerable length of syllables and time too and speaking of time it was zooooooming on by today and even 4.45 wasn't slow. I ran home today and the man was there and asked me to do a test again, which was considerably more interesting this time, although there weren't many syllables per se. Per se has few syllables. And of course he zapped me with his zappy machine but he didn't give me any money, so I asked why and he said he was poor. Poor him, I hope the rain doesn't pour down from his eyes like I see some people do.

Seventh of March, 2013. Today I had a chat with Miss Dunabe, and she laughed quite a lot more than usual, and stared at me oddly. I'm not entirely sure why... regardless, today the sun was shining and we saw a butterfly fly by, but it moved so quickly today. I was quite confident that on previous occasions it had moved much more slowly. It didn't make me quite as happy as on previous occasions, either. The man, whom I suspect is a scientist of some sort, administered another dose of electrical trickery with his machine, and again had no money. He muttered something about government grants. I didn't particularly mind, as I could survive on my janitor's salary quite well, especially considering I was a single male in a small house, with no dependants.

Eighth of March, 2013. Today at the school I saw some light shining through a window and gave a great deal of thought to the idea that light must be energy because it warms us, so therefore, it must be possible to convert light into a usable form of energy. Most likely the easiest way to do so would be to use a semiconducting material which would then knock electrons free and that would then generate electricity. It would probably be possible to magnify the light as well to improve the efficiency of the photon to electron transfer. Unfortunately it would require a large surface area and regular sunlight to be able to gather enough energy to be usable in any large scale.

Ninth of March, 2013. At the advice of Miss Dunabe, I have acquired a personal computer and begun to research photovoltaic cells. It is rather unfortunate that I am not the first person to have discovered such things, but in some ways that is advantageous as there is proof that my ideas would work! I thought about this Internet, which seems quite a useful information interchange, but I've come across a potential problem with securing connections between users. As information on the Internet travels across numerous exchanges before it arrives at its eventual destination, it is entirely possible that someone of malicious intent could intercept the information as it passes through his or her connection, and read or modify it to their desires. To combat this, I have thought of a way of securing such information by encrypting it, but using two different combinations of letters and numbers to encrypt it, rather than just one. Then, if one of those strings of letters and numbers was made publicly available, users could encrypt information they are sending to the owner of that public string, and the two strings would be mathematically related in such a way that only the owner of both strings could decrypt the information encoded with the public string. This would mean that many people could send encrypted information securely across numerous interchanges without fear of having the information compromised in some way. I haven't seen the man with an unusual odour in two days now, although I barely noticed, as the days seemed to speed by.

Tenth of March, 2013. I went to church again today, and found the correlations drawn by the minister of the parallels of marriage between a man and a woman and the relationship of Christ and the church to be most intriguing. It's sad that I don't have a wife. I suppose it's because of my lack of intelligence. That's what my mother told me before she died. I haven't seen her in some time now.

Eleventh of March, 2013. I saw Miss Dunabe today. I told her the smelly man had not been around for a while. She said that maybe that would be okay. I don't know why it matters though, and I saw another butterfly today, moving up and down, up and down. It's strange how butterflies move. Rather haphzard. I ate a burger again today and engaged in discorse with the man of Asian decent, although he spoke without a trace of a accent.

Twelfth of March, 2013. I'm missing words. I can't remember that word with the el in it, or maybe it was many ells. It was a nice word to say but its gone. 4.45pm was slow again today. Its been some time since it was slow. Maybe it's a tuesday thing.

Thirteenth March, 2013. Mrs Dunabe didnt smile today, I dont know why. But I smiled when I saw the flutterby even though she didnt and I laughed at how it was funy moving and I didnt eat a burger today but I made some bacon on toast and sleeped.

Fourthenth march 2013 miz Dunabe wasnt at scool today but that was sad because a kid piked on me but at least didnt puke on me but she stops kids form piking on me becuz she sez it is croo ell. El is a nice letter and its drawn big on the scool room next to a bug. I squish bugs with my mop sometimes when im moping.when im moping I go left rite left rite slooowlyyy and the floor gets shinee.

fiftheent march 2013 miss Dunabe was at scool today and she cryed and cryed and I dnt no why and there was no flutterbies becuz it was rainy rainy poor down like her iyz and she had a fone and caled and said something and I herd a man on the fone sound like a smell and she cried more and I felt sad becuz no flutterbi and rain poor down and teers poor down and no burger today and why wont she stop crieng. I want her stop crieng...

Silence. That's all there was. On the other side of the large mahogany table - large to enforce the barrier between them and us he reminded himself - there were four representatives, each pawing over the proposed document before it would go on to the next step in whatever bureaucratic cycle these poor joes were involved in. Before he had entered the well lit conference room he knew this was the tactic they would use...silence. He wasn't immune to the attack, either. He wanted to sigh, and slouch, and yell "What the hell is taking you so long?! I sent you the document three days ago!" but he new that's what they were looking for. That's what they wanted.

The woman next to him didn't have the same measure of self control. She tapped her high gloss nails against the wooden table super with a quiet intensity. "If you are having trouble reading the proposal gentlemen, we can rewrite it in...simpler language. I understand that a great deal of it uses technical terms that the common man may be unfamiliar with," she told them curtly, her voice barely above a murmur. It made him want to grimace. They were only looking for an excuse, any excuse to turn you away and to never come back to your outfit. You don't expect to be the only game in town, not this town at least, not in this line of business.

They didn't respond right away, and why would they? They don't need this deal to go through; there are others. The longer they wait, the more anxious we get, the better price we settle at. He couldn't tell if fifteen seconds or if several minutes had passed, lulling in and out of astute consciousness from the sheer boredom of these dealings. But this group had developed this method; there was no way you could simply zone them out.

"I presume you are the one that owns the vessel? Captain...?"

"Jim," he responded. The woman next to him looked upset she was not asked the question but why should she? She was only there to help ensure a fair dealing; she held no rank over the issues at hand.

The representatives returned to silently reading over the documents again.

In any other dealing he would most likely be thinking about the fastest way to spend the money, perhaps plan some upgrades for their deteriorating vessel. The door opened suddenly, nearly making him bolt upright. The representatives looked at the intruder, a man so short he could be mistaken for a rather mature looking boy. He held himself well, but his eyes were averted down giving him a perfectly subservient look. He had a tray in his hands with four cups and a coffee pot.

"What is it?" One of the representatives barked; a tired old man. Judging by his town, he was both upset with the intrusion but also grateful at the break in silence.

"I'm sorry, I was told to bring coffee to this conference room. I got lost in the hallways and I..." he started to say, but the representative cut him off.

"We ordered coffee over twenty minutes ago -" had it really been that long already? "-about time you showed up. Our guests will not be drinking any today; please pour the coffee."

The assistant poured coffee, the splashing of the liquid echoing off the walls of the silent room, the clink of the fine china cups intermittently sounding as he finished pouring the coffee. Without a word he left the room, the chocolaty rich aroma of coffee wafting over to Jim and his companion, taunting them. Three of the four representatives, the oens with their hands free to do so, instantly took a sip of the hot liquid.

Jim flashed an eye to his companion; he could tell she was having trouble keeping back a smirk. It would only be another meeting before...

...the first one's head hit the front of the table; the other two following suit, clearly passed out. The fourth representative snapped out of his content state of reading, and upon realizing his comrades had fallen, reached for a conference phone.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," the woman said, already leaning over the table and placing her hand on his. If he was smart, he would be able to tell that it was a knife, possibly a poisoned one, sticking out from her suit jacket. He pulled his hand back and slouched in his chair. The target sedated for now, the woman went to the door and peered out it.

"Let me guess...this is probably your first dealing with people like us, is that correct?" Jim asked, the man nodded rapidly, "that's too bad. It just isn't fair to you, is it, that your first job puts you in so much danger. So here's what I think is going to happen," Jim said, pacing.

"Quickly..." the woman said with a trace of irritability in her voice. Jim ignored her.

"You're going to put your pen to that paper. You're going to sign off on the request, and you're going to tell your boss that the shipment was of such good quality that we should receive our full asking price -" the man started, but Jim waved him off, "no no sir, you are very generous but not a penny above the price. Now go on and sign it...there you go. And here's what else I think, I think you should write a letter to your supervisor, tell them about our great customer service, our charm, my rugged good looks,"

"Really, sir? You're going to do this now?" the woman scowled.

"Alright alright, now it was nice meeting you Frank,"

"My name is Joe-"

"...but we really need to go. Keep in touch," Jim said, handing him a card, "here's my business card if you ever need to contact me."

The Cat and the Man and the Boy

In the passing days after the day I found my cat to have passed away, I was bedridden. Alone and with no one to care for my state, I spent the days gazing up at the white ceiling. My mind wandered across the irregularities of the surface, finding fond memories from when my cat was still with me and we would play together or he would show me his catch of the day. When my eyelids became heavy, I remembered falling asleep with his warmth beside me, his soft purrs a lullaby to whisk me to my dreams.

Today again I was lying in my bed, hearing the suppressed birdsongs that barely came through the bedroom window. I stared into the pale sky and sun until they began to reflect my mood, at which point I started to drift again into restless sleep amongst hallucinations alternating between the dying mews of my cat and the sights of a peaceful cat’s nap. Floating in liminal dreams, I thought I heard a desperate cry from my cat. In the half hope that somehow he had returned to me, that I had seen off some neighbour’s cat and not my own, I tilted my ear to the window to listen for a sign. When it did not come, I dropped my head and hopes and let myself sink slowly back into illusory sleep.

Then, I heard it again: a barely audible mew that, although I could hardly accept as reality but so desperately wanted to be such, jolted me into wakefulness, prompting me to sit up in bed without a sound so as not to mask even the scream of a dying flea.

My ears sharpened painfully; I could hear a deafening ringing that pulsed with the rhythm of my heart that I feared would drown out the sound of another mew – should another even come.

When it did, I dived at my window, slammed my body into the wall, and gazed down into my backyard, my eyes seeking any shape in the ink of night. For a moment my eyes spun wildly in panic, but I recalled where to look and I focused all of my attention to where I knew my cat would always wait for an invitation: the backdoor. Even as my eyes decrypted the darkness to reveal a progressively more defined shape standing by the screen door, I heard another plea and, without further hesitation, I sprinted out of my room clothed only in pajamas, down a modest flight of stairs, through the kitchen, and then crashed into the backdoor. There, I switched on the light outside which illuminated both the small patio and the inside by way of the kitchen windows. I turned the lock, tore the door open, and expectantly opened the screen door, my eyes prepared to flood at the sight of my cat – even if this was all a fool’s delusion.

Looking down, I saw not my cat waiting on the tiny patio, nor any feline, but a pair of pale and petite feet, one hiding behind the other and both soiled by earth and bits of grass, shivering. In wonder, I followed the feet to see fair legs with knobbly knees, and then to my surprise an old and ragged, black T-shirt that hung loosely about most of the frame of a strange boy far too small for the shirt. Sniffing in the night chill, he looked back at me behind a thin veil of shoulder-length hair – black too, like his shirt, but sprinkled with an abnormal amount of silver or grey patches of hair in regular intervals. His visage, possessed by some reminiscent and yet otherworldly quality, was at first timid and anxious, but in a moment it was dominated by a wide grin that exposed a pointed canine and bright gold eyes, the left one tinted by green.

Far too startled by the sight of the boy, I could not react when the he wrapped his arms around my torso and began to rub his face against my abdomen, just as the air filled with a subliminally familiar purring. The world seemed to lose focus as I felt the past four years collapse into the present singularity. I stood for what seemed to be an instant of four years, paralyzed by the weight of time. As I recovered some amount of lucidity, I found myself stroking the boy’s hair and scratching behind his ear as I had done with my cat. Mesmerized by the long-desired sound of a cat’s purring, I thoughtlessly lifted the boy by his underarms inside, shut the doors, and settled into a chair at the kitchen table with the boy in my lap, contented by petting him and letting him nuzzle my neck with a moist nose. The purring became mixed with a melodic humming and in the shadows of my eyelids I slipped at last into a comfortable slumber, massaged by gentle nuzzling.

*

As the breath of the man relaxed, he began to nod; as he began to nod, his strokes through the boy’s hair slowed; and as his strokes stopped, the boy, who already knew he was asleep for his heart’s beating had settled into a peaceful rhythm, slowed his nuzzling. As the boy stopped nuzzling, so too did his first stream of tears stop flowing and he gently let his arms drop from around the body of the man.

Slowly, quietly, he loosed himself of the man’s embrace; slowly, quietly, he stripped himself of the first warmth of his past life; slowly, quietly, he relinquished the last warmth of his afterlife; quickly, quietly, he left by the backdoor without further hesitation. At the grave marker in the backyard, he bathed in the patio light the man had forgotten to switch off. The old bulb from four years ago flickered and gave out, silently sweeping the yard and house with darkness.

*

On the dawn of the following day, the man woke refreshed to find an old and ragged, black T-shirt draped around his shoulders. Puzzled at first, as he held it, he recognized it as the shirt he thought he had lost the first time he brought home his cat. At the thought of his cat, he jolted awake and, compelled by an indistinct memory on the threshold of his consciousness, looked around to behold – nobody. In his haste rushing to the backyard, he knocked over the chair within which he had slept overnight, carrying with him the T-shirt.

Outside, he beheld the grave of his cat; upon his knees, he wept at last, and for the first time since his cat’s passing, into the first and last warmth of the boy.