“I love talking to you, Maya.” I smirk. Maybe it comes off more romantic than it should, but I do genuinely love talking to her.
“Still fuck off…but…I’m glad I can be an entertaining distraction.” Maya smiles, some of the cool and unbothered facade finally falling. Thereisactually a very sweet, caring woman under all of the layers of snark, somewhere. “I gotta go, but, don’t get too lonely, alright?”
“I know who to call if I do…”
“Not me.” Maya’s shields come up again in an instant.
“Absolutely not…” I say, getting to the staircase where my cell reception will cut off, so I stay right at the threshold to keep talking to Maya.
“Have a good rest of your night, and the Nico Robin statue I had to pay a teenager in Tokyo that five hundred bucks I made today to get from a crane game is on your doorstep at home, just checked the tracking.”
“What?” I say in actual shock. Maya always did this, she loved giving outlandish gifts to her friends, all while acting like she truly didn’t give a shit about us. “Are you serious?”
“Maybe…guess you’ll find out when you get home…” Maya looks up at the camera and blows a kiss. “Byeeee…”
The video cuts off, and I’m greeted by Maya’s profile picture, the excitement in my night suddenly disappearing.
Back to the grind. Back to silence. And maybe worst of all, back to my own thoughts.
CHAPTER 3
On most nights,I get at least a bit of social interaction. So many people here seem so devoted to their jobs in a way that I can’t ever imagine being. There’s this one woman, Rosalia, who works on the 8th floor, at Merihem, who always seems to stick around really late, and I can rely on her to say something nice to me almost every night. But she’s started to occupy her time with some new girl in her company that she must be torturing or something, based on how damn sad that girl looks all the time. She needs some therapy if she’s not already getting it. She definitely shouldn’t be hanging out with a woman who is clearly some kind of corrupting force I don’t even want to imagine.
But, neither of them are here tonight. Nobody is here but me and my thoughts, and that can be a hell of a combination to deal with sometimes.
I scroll on my phone, play some games, and try not to think about how I have five more hours to go. It would be too much to annoy Maya again, even if I knew she’d pick up.
I reach over to shake the mouse on my computer to keep it from going to sleep, which happens even if I’m watching anime on it…something I wouldneverdo on the clock, but let’s just say if I was doing that, I’d have to make sure it seems like I’m alsoworking. But when I go to sit back, the whole world plunges into darkness.
Fuck, there’s no way I’ve passed out, I wasn’t feeling weird before…
But, my fears and paranoia about losing touch with reality are made a little less intense when I see the emergency lights click on a moment later, bathing the lobby in a dim orange glow. Various security and safety systems hum as they come back online, and I realize that I’ve never experienced a power outage in this building before tonight.
I grab the flashlight on the desk and stand up. I’m surprisingly more calm about this than I probably should be, because this power outage could have been caused by literally anything. Maybe terrorists struck the power grid, maybe adifferentband of terrorists have staged a high-stakes heist in one of the offices above me. Maybe a supernatural serial killer has picked this building to stake his claim as the most notorious slasher of all time…I’d hate to break it to him that there aren’t too many people around here to kill, but it would be pretty cool to be the Final Girl by default.
“Hello?” I say to absolutely nobody, hopefully, and thankfully nobody replies.
Backup power supplies beep and buzz throughout the building, and I open the desk drawer to look for a folder labeled ‘Emergency Procedures’ that I’m glad I remember exists, because I’m going to be entirely honest, I don’t remember much of what Molly told me months ago.
The folder has clearly never been pulled out of this desk, and the documents inside make me wonder if they’ve been updated since the Clinton era. I disregard the instructions for getting the fax lines back up and running, and wonder if I really do need to call Arnold Martin, who is probably dead, on his landline phone.
After going through page after page of nostalgia someone other than me would surely find interesting, I get to the section labeled “Restoring Power”.
RESTORING POWER
This building is equipped with a state of the art power recovery system that will automatically reset breakers as needed. If power failures persist for more than a few minutes, please page Dustin at 550-0093 and he will get there ASAP.
I assume Dustin has moved on to bigger and better things, and hopefully upgraded his phone situation, but the next paragraph gives me some relief.
If Dustin is not available, the manual breaker reset box is located in the utility closet in G103.
Alright, well, I’m not waiting on Dustin, so, I turn my flashlight down the hall and for the first time look at the numbers of the rooms on this floor. The one next to the desk is G101, and I quickly find G103 on the other side of the lobby.
The door creaks as I open it, and although I’ve been down this utility hallway before, in this half-light it looks far more threatening, even with the light of my flashlight. Along the wall, next to legally-required employment posters, MSDS guides, and a blood spill cleanup kit that I haven’t had to use before and quite frankly didn’t know existed, I see a grey utility box, keys hanging from the lock.
I open the box and realize I don’t know if I’ve ever been saddled with the responsibility of having to take care of something like this, but I’ve at least seen enough movies to know that I just need to flip the ones that are ‘off’ over to ‘on’.
The breakers flip with a satisfying ‘ka-chunk’, and as I do it, I can hear the building moaning and groaning as power returns. The HVAC system shudders to life, and a sudden wave of air flutters across my shoulders, scaring the shit out of me for a moment.
