CHAPTER TWO

"GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!" I yelled as I ripped the visor from my head. By the time the GAME OVER text had appeared on the visor I was already out of my chair and flinging it across to the room at the opposing wall. I let anger and ego get the better of me. The plastic and metal crunch from my only OASIS rig sounded aloud, creating a pit of regret in my stomach. Still seething, I kicked the small night stand next to me, knocking over the single lamp lighting the room. It toppled against the wall and then to the floor, the vase-like base cracking and splitting into two pieces, darkening the already dimly lit room. I think the lopsided shade sent angles of luminescence up the walls and ceiling to make the visage of a creepers generic grimace just to mock my failure. "God…God fucking dammit."

"NUMBER 4!" A grainy voice blurted through the loudspeaker mounted over the door to the room. "Noise violation after hours! This is your third this month! Further infractions of housing guidelines will result in eviction!" Like a scolded child I pressed my thumb against the button marked "SEND".

"Sorry, Mr. Lindemann." I huffed towards the speaker. "I was online and I forgot where I was."

"You're always loud, number 4. Keep the noise to a low roar or your unit will be let out to one of the many people on the waiting list who can be quiet at three thirty in the morning."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Lindemann. It won't happen again." I let off the button waiting for a response but there was only the silence of the room and the smell of something burning. To my right, the ancient ass fluorescent bulb in the lamp was trying to melt its way through the shade. A small trail of smoke rose from the light. I lunged and snatched it up. The smoke trailed away into nothingness as I viewed the damaged what was left. It was trash when I scavenged it but it was really trash now. In the end, I'm sure I could glue or tape it back together but the burn ring on the shade was just another black mark on the day. Wait. Did he say three thirty? The piercing red numbers on the alarm clock across the room confirmed his statement. 3:35. I have to get up for work in just over two hours. Damn, I was logged in for a lot longer than I thought. The sun was going down when I slid the visor on. Oh my god, my visor. Both halves of the lamp wobbled and stood well enough to remain vertical on its own. When I picked up the Oasis rig by the elastic headband, what was left sagged in three pieces. Ruined beyond repair. Fatigue found me as I scanned the small rented room I called home; the filthy single person shower, the trashcan overflowing with soy bar wrappers, the unmade bed and the dirty mirror across from me. All of it compounded the underlying themes that my life, all nineteen years of it, were a bigger failure than the foul-up on planet Minecraft.

With no way to log into the OASIS and the threat of the coming workday looming, I dropped the visor, turned off what was left of the lamp and collapsed into the bed. And there, in the shifting swamp of low count sheets, a revelation found me:

I REALLY need to get my life together.

The alarm went off soon enough and with so little rest, I felt half-drunk trying to drag myself out of bed. Luckily, muscle memory took over and without opening my eyes I found the shower. To my surprise there was actually some hot water mixed in with my normal morning ration of cold. With one central hot water tank assigned to this block of thirty units, getting hot water was as rare as finding an Oasis artifact. Whether the other people in the block overslept or showered last night, I didn't care. A small indulgence like this made the events of the last eight hours suck a little less. But like all good things, they come to an end. This time it ended in a gush of ice cold water shooting over my head and down my back. The innate reactions of fight or flight came swift and I flailed in my indecision between turning off the water and trying to get out of its way altogether. I almost fell and broke my neck as the flight reaction took hold. Leaping out onto the ragged mat shielding my feet from the freezing tile I shivered a small moment of relief. When my senses stopped pinging long enough to think straight, my arm shot in long enough to shut off the water. Brrrr. Between the three stacks of clothes, I found the one I best recalled as being "least dirty". Out of it I pulled a pair of jeans and long sleeve shirt with the name of local bailbondsman who was doing a charity drive and advertising event down the road. Bailbondsman are like the local celebrities here in the Over the Rhine area of Cincinnati. With the court systems being in disarray and backed up, they tout their wares and claim to be the friend of those most likely to commit a crime. Like the rest of us. I didn't want to advertise for the scumbag but when you're poor, clothes are clothes. It didn't smell too much so I slipped it on and found the worn old camouflage army jacket I'd managed to plunder from a donation bin in town. There wasn't anything fashionable about it, but beggers can't be choosers. The only part of the ensemble I had any say in was the Harry Potter black and yellow striped Hufflepuff scarf I'd shoplifted from an estate sale three years ago. It was frayed and dingy but dammit it was mine. I wrapped it about my neck and shoulders two, three times and over to let it hang. My stomach was already reminding me I hadn't eaten so I filled my 'lunch bag' with two soy bars, a styrofoam container of "Ramen Friend" noodles, my stainless steel chopsticks, and a can of generic energy drink that was somehow named "Nitro Crack". I shit you not, the slogan was literally "liquid crack you can drink!" I know it's not a well-balanced diet but hey, beggers, right?

The door clicked shut behind me as I stepped out into the concrete hall of the blocks. Floors, walls, and ceiling, you name it, all concrete. "blocks", get it? Yeah, I know, we don't get a lot of poets here in the discount housing districts. Every sound in a concrete corridor echoes way louder than it should so I tried to walk on the outsides of my steps as not to rouse anyone in the other units who might still be sleeping. Making a game of it, I was silent as the grave until the end. Boom. My roll for stealth was a natural 20 as I opened the security door leading outside. Not to be outdone, bad luck reared its head to mock my hard work of being quiet. As I stepped out into the light of the floodlights around the building, a gust of frigid December air yanked the latch out of my grip and the heavy door swung out to slam into the side of the building creating a bang as loud as a car crash. Oh shit. I pulled the door back and shut it before hoofing it down the snow-covered embankment towards the main road. The crunching of the snow drowned out the sounds of my breaths and I'd just managed to reach the corner of the next block before I heard the voice of Mr. lindemann pierce the morning air.

"Son of a bitch!" he yelled as I slipped away into the blackness. Even with the heavy crunch of the snow, I could hear the door bang shut. My eyes adjusted to the pitch black and from almost every direction I could see the droves of people emerging from the blocks. Lunch buckets and winter coats rustling in the shadows in uniform flocks. You could say we looked like the walking dead, shuffling and bumping into one another. Say what you want, zombies are resilient. These days, that's something you have to get used to being if you don't want to get steamrolled by the real world. I love zombies. Personally, I've seen every zombie movie ever made. George Romero films are my favorite by far. I wish I could have met him. He seemed cool but he died a decade before I got shoved into this world. It's harder here. Opportunity doesn't grow on trees and every person out here in the biting cold migrating towards the recycling center down this mile-long hill knows the truth. The recycling center isn't great. It smells like sour milk and flat soda pop in the summer and there's hardly any shelter or method to stay warm in the winter. There might not be any work for all of us. It's usually first come, first served, but there's never guarantees. Thanks to the disbanding of all labor unions ten years ago, companies like the center here who need labor can get away with paying next to nothing in wages for the steady supply of day labor. Can't keep up with the pace? Hit the bricks. Can't work because you're sick? Your replacement is already here. A falling piece of metal cut your hand off? Don't bleed on the equipment on your way out. The only thing more demoralizing or humiliating than that is the fact that the Over the Rhine Community Recycling Center's parent company is none other than Innovative Online Industries. That's right, IOI. I'm the wage slave for the "sixers". If the center wasn't the very hand that was helping to feed me I'd have found a way to sabotage the eyesore years ago. Maybe a fire. Oh well, hopeful thinking. For now, I'd have to concentrate on just trying to get through the front gate for a chance to suckle the lathery half dry teat of the enemy if I wanted to stay alive. I was pretty sure I could get in. My chances were a little better since I'd worked the welding shop in the back a few times and not broken anything.

As we moved down the slope, more and more files of people pushed together to form a single shuffling mass on the icy road. I was entertaining the idea of my fellow zombies and I eating the plant's managerial staff when someone bumped me from the right.

"Mornin' Terry." A gruff voice offered." My eyes adjusted just enough to look down and see the smiling, wrinkled face of Lee Fox, another guy from the blocks. Lee was a real hard charger, the last of the real old school. Born sometime in the 1960's, he was a walking time machine and a wealth of knowledge if you knew to ask the right questions. I mean, this guy was something else. He's almost eighty years old and out here in the cold busting his butt harder than some of the younger guys a quarter of his age.

"Morning, Lee." I said. "Cold out, huh?"

"Colder than well digger's asshole. My damn hands are cold."

"I've got some fingerless gloves here in my pocket."

"You don't want them?"

"I accidentally left my good ones in my room. Too late to go back now."

"Well, hand 'em over." I began digging through the oversized field jackets pocket right outer pocket and fished them out for him. "Thanks. I'll give 'em back to you at the end of the shift. If…the yankee scumbags let us in.I need to work today. My pantry is getting bare."

Lee's southern accent gave away where he grew up in coal country, Kentucky. "Raised in the shadow of the black mountain, I was." He once told me. To this day I have no idea where that place is but it sounds goth as shit. He might've been country at heart but he was a gamer down to the bone. We met earlier this year on a break when I overheard him telling a story to other workers about how some games were scarce in the 90's and you had to go to a rental store to hunt through the racks.

"Why didn't you just look up the online descriptions for the games and decide that way before you went to the store?" One of the younger ones gathered around him asked.

"Because the net was still being built." I said from behind. "You had to get reviews from magazines."

"Correct!" He said as he pointed a finger at me with a huge grin and asked; "But can you name one of the magazines?"

"Electronic Gaming Monthly." I replied.

"Bingo!" He laughed.

After that, we talked every day during the walk to the recycling center. It made the trek go by faster. Vintage games, movies, TV shows, comic books, music, all of it. I've always been a nostalgia geek but since Lee had lived in those earlier times, he knew the little things archives and interviews can't always tell you. Lee had been a gamer since the dawn of video games first began. He knew all of it because he lived it. Arcade cabinets, the evolution to consoles, virtual reality's failed birth in the 90's and its long-awaited reincarnation in the 2020's. Arcades, cyber cafés, VR parlors, and ultimately crossing the immersive digital frontier of Halliday's OASIS. On his left bicep he even had a well-drawn but a weathered tattoo of the pixelated demonic face of Sinstar, the scary ass floating techno-alien nemesis from the old school video game of the same name. If you don't know who Sinistar is, check out the archives. His digital scream alone is enough to give you chills.

I felt like such a poser for arriving to the party so late and not getting to see the change for myself. But for all my envy of his experiences, Lee would occasionally tell me "Dying is gonna suck because I'm not going to be around to see what the next big thing is going to be." Sometimes on the way back from the plant, we'd get so wrapped up trying to outdo one another that we'd just sit on the dilapidated cinderblock wall around the "blocks" and talk gaming until it was too dark or too cold to be outside.

The slope of the road was even more slick as it began to level off. A lone downspout hanging off the edge of the building closest to the road must've dumped water on the pavement all night, turning the asphalt into a twenty-foot-wide ice patch. The people in the crowd a few paces ahead of us began toppling over and slipping all over the place. The person in front of me lost his footing and went sprawling, their lunch bucket skittering off out of sight. Without thinking, I instinctually reached up between Lee's shoulder blades and grabbed a fistful of excess material. As soon as I did so, Lee lurched in place, his feet separating in a painful looking splits position. "Horse's ass!" he yelped. Lee dropped about a foot before the grip I had on his jacket pulled taut stopping his fall. With a strong yank I pulled him high enough that he could get traction again. "Good catch, my boy! You're a life saver." He patted me but I didn't let go. "A fall at my age could be a damn death sentence. "Promise me something, Terry. If I fall and break my hip, go ahead and finish me off before the damn paramedics get here."

"I am not killing you."

"I won't hold a grudge, it'll be a mercy killing. Be damned if I'm gonna get laid up with pneumonia and be left to die in a damn hospital bed surrounded by strangers. I ain't kidding, Terry. You do the Christian thing and bash my head in with a rock or throw me off the overpass. No hard feelings."

"Don't talk like that." I told him. "You're still in your prime."

"I'm not as young as I used to be. Promise me you'll never get old, Terry. Getting old is hell."

"I promise."

"That's a good man." He managed a smile as pulled me towards him. "Let's veer right, there's less ice over here."

The rest of the mile went fast enough and before we knew it we were standing in the middle of the crowd outside the gates of the complex. The mass was mostly quiet, people shifting in place. I tried to see through the large iron barred gate blocking the entrance. I hoped the supervisor in charge of the welding shop would spot me and pick me out of the crowd. He liked the fact that I worked hard and didn't show up high like the majority of the other day laborers. If I could spot him and get his attention before they started cattle call there would be a really good chance of getting in. There were no promises of anything. I looked down at Lee who was cupping his hands over his mouth and trying to blow warm air through them. Two breaths later he began expelling a raspy cough that didn't sound healthy at all.

"Are you alright?" I asked. "Anything I can do?"

"Unless you can get the sun to rise faster, then no."

A loud clang at the gate got my attention. The metal on metal clickity clack of the logging chain being pulled link by link through made everyone cringe. The gate was thrown wide and the foreman appeared in the threshold, clipboard in hand. A portly man scratching a trimmed beard stood atop a grimy plastic bucket to see over the crowd. I'd seen him before, the plant manager, the head honcho. With a nod, a supervisor handed him the microphone and tone of the P.A. sounded overhead.

"Good morning!" he said aloud. A wave of feedback regressed through the system and shot through the crowd, causing everyone to cover their ears. "Turn it back a bit." He said before the noise stopped. "Ah, there we go. Can everyone hear me? Good. Ok, Again, good morning. Before we begin work call this morning, it's my unfortunate duty should inform all of you that one of our trucks carrying precious materials to be processed here at the plan was hijacked by highway men last night. One of our own, Dale King, was pulled from his truck and killed. A bunch of scumbags thought they had the right to take something that didn't belong to them and they killed a good man just for being in their way. From what I hear they yanked him out of the cab and shot him on the spot for doing his job. Can you believe that? And for what? Four tons of scrap computer chips. I don't understand it." Lee nudged me to get my attention and when I leaned closer he whispered in my ear.

"Four tons? Four tons of chips with gold pins in them would be worth a fortune. That's why they robbed it. There's enough precious metals like platinum, palladium, and rhodium in the mountain of catalytic converters behind the traffic office alone for one person to live like a fat cat if you knew how to get it out. Oh shit, Terry he's looking at us." I looked up to find the Foreman staring me down.

"Son, is the reason you're talking more important than the death of one of your fellow coworkers?"

"No, sir!" I shouted back with a straight face. "Mr. King once helped me get through some hard times and I want to see those 'scumbags' brought to justice for what they did to a good man!"

"You're right!" the foreman agreed. "Justice does need to be done. What's your name?"

"Terry Keets, Sir! My friend Mr. Fox here and I work in the welding room. We're both deeply troubled that such an atrocity could happen to such a dedicated employee!" Lee looked up at me with bugged eyes.

"You're off your damn nut. We didn't know that guy." He whispered.

"Shut up, I'm trying to get us in." I said through my teeth while flashing a wide grin. Lee had a point. I'd only seen the elderly man in passing half a dozen times.

"We all should be troubled, Mr. Keets. I've already received a memorandum from our parent company expressing their sympathy and condolences and they've asked that an independent investigation be conducted so that the perpetrators can be arrested." The man's expression sagged a bit. "Oh well, that's enough of that for now. But the loss of Mr. King's materials truck will affect today's schedule and we'll need less workers on the floor. Having said that, I'm going to hand things over to the section heads and assignments will be doled out. Thank you."

As he stepped down, the crowd murmured and made a subtle but hard shift forwards the gate. A supervisor took his place on the bucket and began calling out for volunteers. It really didn't matter what job was being offered, we all yelled "here!" and gesticulated to get noticed. The people in the back kept pressing forward, crushing everyone together like the fans in front of a stage at a rock concert. Things got cramped quick and someone jabbed an elbow in my right kidney. To my left, Lee, who was shorter than most, start to look worried at being pressed upon from every side. Even while standing on his tippy toes, his hand was barely visual amongst the rest. More assignments came and went; the scrap area, the shipping dock, the sorting area, and lastly the baling machine room. I tried my best to get chosen but couldn't get noticed. I didn't see the welding room supervisor anywhere.

"That's it!" The supervisor waved. "That's all we need for today!" Shouts of disappointment pleading filled the air but the pushing and shoving eased. Most of the people began to disperse.

"Dammit." Lee cursed. "I wanted to get in."

"Hold up." I told him. "Let me see check on something."

"What are you gonna do?" I shoved my way forward to the gate as one of the managers was starting to thread the chain back through the bars of the gate.

"Excuse me, Sir? Excuse me!" I waved at the guy with the clipboard.

"There's no more positions open for today." He said without looking back.

"I know that, but you didn't mention the welding shop."

"I didn't?" He stopped.

"No. You named all the others but my friend Lee and I work in the welding shop. If you could find the welding 'super' he can tell you."

"Walter isn't here today, he's out sick. Besides, with the slower schedule today, we couldn't use more than one of you. You wanna work?" I looked back at Lee who stood rigid in the snow. We both needed the money, but with him needing groceries and me knowing my supply of soy bars would last a little longer, I did what needed to be done.

"Hold on a second," I turned away to rush over to where Lee was standing.

"You'll want to take this guy today!" I yelled. Grabbing Lee by arm of his coat, I almost pulled him off his feet. "Here, Lee knows what to do and won't cause you any problems.

"Terry, what are you.." Lee stammered. " I don't know how to operate the-"

"It's okay. Pretend you're busy, the supervisor isn't here, just look busy." I assured him in a whisper. "We'll both get work tomorrow. Oh, and don't forget your lunch." Before he could react, I shoved my lunch bag in his arms and pushed him through the gate. "Don't forget to sweep the floor when you're done so the supervisor is happy!" The managers looked a little confused at me giving up my spot but shook their heads and started closing gate once more. Lee kept walking and turned once to wave and shoot me a smile. I hated to pass on a day's wages but sometimes others need things more. My stomach instinctively grumbled its protest. "Yeah, quiet you."

Just then, a piercing winter gust kicked up like a whirlwind and surrounded me, making sure to jam its icy fingers up my pant legs and up the front of my field jacket. As the wind twisted upwards, my knit hat peeled itself fee and went flying across the gravel parking lot. I gave chase. The hat raced ahead of me, tumbling and flitting away. I almost had it twice, but every time I tried to grab it, it easily leaped out of reach. Around and under the rows of cars it weaved. Finally the wind died down and it came to rest next to an unfrozen puddle between two semi- truck cabs. I rushed to collect it before it ended up in the water. As I lunged, a white flash just out of the corner of my sight moved directly at me and slammed me square between the eyes.

If ever there's a hard luck contest anywhere in the world I'd love to see someone try and pull the golden trophy from my hands. Thus began the great "Grand Parking Lot Ballet of Fail". The blow to the face stunned me enough to stagger for balance to my left. Once I collided with the side of the semi-truck, I panicked and tried to latch onto something, anything stationary. My fingertips slipped across the slick, dew-covered, painted panels of the sleeper compartment as I tripped over my own feet and toppled chest first into the very puddle I'd hoped to save the cap from. I scrambled to get out. In the process of flailing I managed to soak both of my upper legs and entire left arm. I made it vertical in less than three seconds but the freezing sensation of the water was already finding spreading across goosepimpled flesh. A creeping cold a hundred times worse than that of the whirlwind shot through my body and I began to convulse from the shock of the temperature shift.

"Hey, buddy!" Someone called to me. "You alright?" Spastic sensations sunk their nails deep and I couldn't make words. I just shivered. All I could think about was the long mile back to the blocks and how much it was going to suck ass. If that wasn't enough, another sensation different than the cold found my hands. I saw that in my attempt to catch myself, my palms took the brunt of the impact on the gravel. Dozens of miniscule cuts began to materialize as the blood found its way to the surface. Each began to weep a little making them appear to grow in size.

If bullshit were music, my life would be a big brass band.

"Hey, kid." The voice said again. "You took a mean fall there. You okay? I didn't see you there and I guess I swung the door open without looking."

"My hands are bleeding."

"Oh shit, did I do that? Come here, I've got a first aid kit up in the cab if you want. We can put some suave on it." The wind picked up and my cap threatened to slip away again before I pinned it with my boot. It wasn't the truckers fault. It was an accident. I knew it wasn't on purpose, but still, a rage began to push its way to the surface. Even while freezing there in the cold ass parking lot I felt my cheeks flush and get hot. Between the botched raid, the yelling landlord, the lack of work and falling in the puddle I felt like screaming until my voice blew out. Anger and potential hypothermia made me quake. The tiniest of voices in the back of my head told me to cuss the trucker up one side and down the other but again I knew it wasn't on purpose.

"Are you okay?" The trucker said again.

"I'm… just…cold." I managed to say through gritted teeth as I looked at my palms again. As I spoke, a man with a reflective vest and a digital clipboard rounded the front of the truck and approached the two of us. It was the plant safety supervisor

"What's happened here?" The thin man said.

"I was just stepping out of my cab here…" The trucker offered before the supervisor cut him off.

"Did you hit another one? Bill, that's the third person you've struck by swinging a door open without looking. Sir?" he looked at me. "Are you hurt? Do you require medical attention?"

"I'm cold-d." I mumbled as my teeth began to chatter. "I need-d-d t-t-to get hom-m-m-me."

"Are your hands bleeding?" Before I could reply he closed the distance between Bill and I and grabbed one of my wrists to see the palm. He looked at the other before making a grimace "Great. Yeah, this is an accident on company property and needs to be documented. What's your name?"

"Terry Keats."

"Do you work here at the plant?"

"Yeah, most days."

"Okay, come with me. We have a medical station inside."

"Look, I need to get home, I'm wet and freezing."

"That's alright, we have an onsite facility here in the plant to clean and dry them. There's a shower with hot water in there too. We'll get you something dry and then we can fill out the incident paperwork. Come on. And as for you, Bill…" He looked back over his shoulder. "I'll write this up as a 'no fault' but you and I are going to talk later today." Bill hung his head before opening the door to his cab and vanishing inside. Near delirious from exposure, I did my best to follow the reflective vest back to the main gate before security waved us inside. The safety guy looped a lanyard with a card marked VISITOR over my head and I followed him through a series of locked doors he needed a keycard to pass through. Once entirely out of the elements I began to feel a little better. The fluorescent bulbs overhead created a dull but piercing wash over everything and hurt the eyes. The soles of my boots squeaked behind the man as we travelled the length of a hallway that seemed longer than the plant itself. The whole setting felt like a corridor from Metal Gear. When we reached the end, he swiped his keycard for access to another brightly lit section. On the left were workstations and a server room far in the corner. To the right was a partitioned first aid station with amenities like a small apartment; washer, dryer, small bed, eye wash station. I might've considered the whole thing pleasant if not for the six-foot "IOI Industries" sign staring back at me. The temperature of the room was warm and welcoming even if the sign wasn't. He stepped away long enough for me to glance at the closest workstation and see a framed picture of the guy with what looked like his family. Next to that, a desktop sign marked 'Kayden Baker' gave me his name. When Kayden returned from the far side of the room he handed me a folded, grey boiler room suit with a zipper stretching from crotch to neck. A patch with the stitched letters 'IOI maintenance' adorned the left chest.

"Take this. There's a shower around the corner." He pointed towards the apartment. "Also, there's a rack of towels next to the door. Get yourself cleaned up and I'll start the documentation."

"Thanks-s-s." I managed a half smile before shuffling away.

Inside the secluded room, I dumped the field jacket into the floor and began the grueling process of peeling the wet jeans from my legs. They had become so difficult that at the end I was sitting on the floor and kicking the material away like a child. At last, the denim fell with a "shlorp" into a shapeless pile. With the rest stripped off I flipped the handle to activate the water. Whether it was because of lack of familiarity or my clammy skin begging for any source of heat, the hot water felt amazing.

From a shelf molded into the shower wall a bottle of multipurpose body wash/shampoo two years past its expiration date beckoned to be used. The cap popped open and the aroma of fake strawberry chemicals within wasn't entirely repulsive. Bonus. I wanted to mentally let go and enjoy the sensations but the nagging thoughts of the botched raid seeped in from around the edges of my brain and forced their way to the forefront. What was I going to do now? I'm fucking level one again. The next time I log into the OASIS my avatar won't have any weapons, armor, upgrades or anything. It's all gone. Not only mine but everyone else's as well. What were the others going to do? None of us had the resources or credits to get our avatars back up to speed. Even if we WERE able to get our equipment back, we'd have to grind in PvP zones for close to a year straight non-stop to get the XP needed to level back up to where we'd been. Sure, I'd still have my credits but it wouldn't be enough to replace my gear by a long shot. Jesus, everyone is going to be furious. I know Teega and the others will justifiably be inconsolable but Rex is going to be a complete basketcase the next time we talk. Then it dawned on me. I didn't have a rig to log into the OASIS with. It wasn't fancy by any means but at least it worked. Why was I so stupid?

I tried to linger in the small but high-powered stream as long as I could, letting the near scalding spray massage my crown and shoulders. Each tendril of the coursing water felt incredible, but in the end, I knew I'd have to get out.

The handle gave a high-pitched squeak as it rotated and I stepped from the stall. A matted towel nearby was coarse to the touch as it dried me off. I slipped both feet into the boiler room suit and zipped it up to the neck. Most of the material felt a bit like the towel, scratchy but better than drenched clothes. Muddy, oily water swirled the drain as I wrung the pants and shirt, and when the material wouldn't give up another drop I bundled it within the half-wet jacket. I returned to Kayden's desk and he handed me a tablet with what looked like a typed report already on it.

"Read over what I typed up and see if there's anything that needs to be changed. If it's correct, sign at the bottom. In the meantime, give me those dirty clothes." I handed them over and he stepped into the other room as I began reading a sterile but accurate account of what had happened outside. He pitched the whole mess of clothes in the washer and turned it on. As he began walking back the door we'd entered through opened. I recognized the plump, bearded face of the plant manager immediately.

"This the guy, Mr. Baker?" he asked.

"Yes, Sir, Mr. Keats took a blow to the head while walking through the parking lot." The man looked me over.

"I remember you from this morning." He said. "So you know, well, knew, Dale King."

"Oh Yes, Sir!" I lied "He was a good man, he didn't deserve to have that happen to him."

"Isn't that the damn truth. Police report says the highway men caught him outside his cab and blew his brains out on the side of the road and left him there for the animals to start chewing on." Having said that, he paused to look me over again.

"Do you work here?"

"Yes, Sir. In the welding shop."

"Is that right? If you work in the welding shop how come you were in the parking lot after work call?"

"I'm a regular worker, but due to Mr. King's death, there wasn't any work for my section."

"I see." He nodded, looking convinced.

"Well, I can't do anything about that today but maybe I can find something else for you to do to make a day's wages. "I've got a special package in my office I'd like you to take care of." For a second I had a terrible vision of what those words could mean. It could've been my imagination getting the better of me but people are animals these days. Whatever he had in mind behind the closed door of his office could be anything from delivering an inter-office memo to an adult sized black vinyl Little Bo Peep costume with a ball gag. The day was turning to be such a total "drive-by" that neither would've surprise me.