My work day started out ordinary and unremarkable. I parked in the lot, checked the other spaces, but didn't see Snakey's car anywhere. Getting nervous, I waited for the doors to open, keeping a watchful eye for that black Trans Am.

When 5:45 passed without a sign of the vehicle, I could only sigh and walk into the building, going about my normal business.

Arguments about premium data charges and text messages. A thirty minute fraud call where the woman cried into the phone and refused to speak to the fraud department. A "why is my phone off" call. Etcetera.

I fell into the usual routine of setting up service extensions on phones, asking for payments, explaining bills, informing people that their accounts were in collections.

One woman actually demanded that we call her roommate and make her pay her bill, when it wasn't even the woman's account.

About twenty minutes into this, I saw my corporate instant messenger flashing red in the corner of the screen, my boss Gary's name in the box. It was a private message. Private messages from the boss are rarely good things.

Swallowing, I read what he sent.

`Did you touch Victor's computer yesterday?'

Feeling cold and pale, I typed no.

I closed the box, assuming we were done.

Figuring the lack of response was a good thing, I returned my attention to the relentless stream of phone calls.

Phone service restoration. Trying to squeeze payments out of customers who refused to pay anything.

`What's with Victor's desk?' I messaged. Gary gave me no answer.

At break time, I checked the parking lot for Snakey's car. Still wasn't there. It was annoying to have to keep checking like that, but it wasn't like I had his phone number.

I returned to the building, got a cup of coffee. I found the strange woman seated at a break room table, typing something on a laptop.

Still confused about our exchange on the day previous, I tapped her on the shoulder. "You stopped and spoke to me earlier. But it was all gibberish. I don't get it. Is this some kind of game?"

She just chuckled and shook her head. "If it's gibberish, why do you keep communicating to me with it?"

"Cute. But I'm not talking about English."

"Neither am I. And we certainly aren't speaking it right now."

When it finally dawned on me that our lips weren't forming English syllables, I backed away in horror.

The woman only laughed and folded up her laptop, waking away.

With my mind full of questions and unrest, I finished my coffee and got back on the phone.

My mind just kept going back to that video I saw. That video of a blue creature writing my name on the wall, begging for help. Was it real? Were all my dreams real? Or was the video a hallucination? What could it possibly mean?

A rude customer was serious entitlement delusions called in, smugly demanding his late fees waived for no good reason, so I put him on hold for over a minute. Butthole tax, I thought.

It neared lunch time. As I frantically typed memos on a previous customer's account while speaking to a new one about something equally complicated, I noticed a box reading `GWarren' flashing on my corporate messenger.

`Log into AUX 4 and come see me,' the message said.

AUX 4 is a code we put in the telephone to tell it we're busy and cannot take phone calls. When I was first hired as a trainee, I didn't use the AUX function at all. I came back from lunch to find a customer had been sitting on the phone for thirty minutes, waiting for me to pick up.

Aux 4. Back office.

Great, I thought. What did I do now?

My mind ran over the possibilities. Did I mess up a call? Did I tell a customer the wrong thing? Did I mess up an account?

`I told you I didn't touch the thing,' I typed. It was a stretch, but it was my only guess, considering his earlier messages.

`We'll talk about it,' Gary replied.

Why the back office? I thought, but I knew it was no use trying to get answers from Gary when he was like this.

I tried to log into Aux 4, but a call came in, a long one about billing issues.

I told Gary I was stuck, but would go back to meet him ASAP.

It was one of those situations where a customer skips paying a month, then pays every month following it without covering the missing amount, in this case also shorting us money. It took ten minutes for me to get that point across to her, and still it ended up being escalated to a supervisor. Only then could I escape my phone and comply with Gary's request.

`Sorry. I'm done,' I typed.

`That's fine. Come see me and Christina in the back office.'

Christina.

That didn't sound good.

I cringed. Gary never involved the head department manager in something unless I did something that could possibly result in me being fired.

I cringed.

With my shoulders slumped, and my head low, I nervously stumbled to the dreaded corner office with the window and the square metal desk with the fake wood top, avoiding eye contact with my frowning supervisors.

Gary leaned against a marker board along the back wall, fluorescents glinting off his glasses. Ordinarily the guy was cool, but this situation set me on edge.

Christina was young, severe looking blonde with long hair, always well dressed. Gold necklace, turquoise inlaid silver earrings, tasteful business attire, sharp white blouse with a vest.

Christina and I never talked, except in bad circumstances. I frequently got in trouble with her at the previous department for sending poorly worded e-mails to customers and businesses. After the department closed, we met again when she didn't like my employee chat messages. I promised her I wouldn't send anything unless I had to.

Maybe, just maybe, she intended to fire me for keeping my chat messages purely cold and business-like.

Gary waved at a gray swivel chair on the employee side of the desk. "Have a seat."

I plopped into the ergonomic padding, staring at the grain in the simulation wood desk top.

I glanced up at Christina's chubby white face for a moment to read her expression, then looked down again.

"Gary tells me you've been in Victor's cubicle."

I frowned, shaking my head. "I didn't touch anything. I just watched a video."

A long pause followed this. Gary and Christina exchanged knowing looks. "And what did you see?"

I described it.

Another pause.

"What do you think it is?" Gary asked.

"I don't know. Some kind of prank? Why would my name be on the program like that? You got something planned for my birthday? Or is it a weird kind of video game?"

Pause.

"Just a moment."

Christina whispered something to Gary.

"Stay here," Gary said. The two left me in the room.

I found it a tremendous relief that they were pulling me aside over something that nobody could logically fire someone about. The only thing that annoyed me was that this unscheduled break had to be done in the manager's office, where the coffee had to be purchased on the honor system, and I wasn't supposed to leave my chair.

I stared at the papers obscuring the desk; something about proprietary equipment, a disciplinary action form, and a handful of other threatening documents, deciding not to touch them for fear of making matters worse.

A sheet written in an unreadable foreign script tantalized me, but I resisted the temptation to pick it up.

The two managers re-entered the room with Gary looking a bit sheepish, Christina very cold and stern.

Christina's icy gaze bore straight through me as her mouth opened and words came out. "At Sprint we take our proprietary systems and entertainment software very seriously. We do not want anything of what we're doing here leaking to our competitors, and for this reason we have kept all information about this a secret from all entry level employees such as yourself. We don't want AT&T or Verizon learning about our new artificially intelligent programs, so we found the best way to do this is not tell frontline employees about it until we already had it in use and in stores. Now that you have been exposed to the product, you present a substantial risk to the financial security of this company. Because of this, we're going to ask you to sign a non-disclosure agreement."

She slid a pen and sheet of paper over the desk.

"So it's an AI program?" I said. "That's why it knows my name? It read my badge?"

Gary pointed two `finger guns' at me. "Got it in one."

As I examined the sheet, Gary said, "The form basically states that you agree to keep any and all information about the system a secret, and to not mention it to friends, family or (ahem) other coworkers, or face automatic termination and possible legal charges."

I could feel my face flushing red. "How was I supposed to know I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about it?"

"It doesn't matter," said Christina. "We have the situation under control. So if you'd just sign and date this form near the bottom..."

I frowned. "Otherwise you'll not only fire me, but you'll also sue me?"

Gary sucked in his breath. "In a manner of speaking..."

"Only if you violate the terms of this agreement," Christina said with more finality.

"What do you mean, `in a manner of speaking'?"

"Well..." Gary stammered. "You won't need to worry about that if you don't tell anyone about the program."

Christina glanced at Gary, turned her cold stare back to me.

I stared at the terms with bewilderment. It seemed to be saying something about reporting negatively to other employers. "You want me to sign something that allows you to blackball me?"

"Again, it's only if you don't follow the terms of the agreement."

I eyed her with suspicion. "This doesn't seem legal."

Gary sighed. "Do you want your job or not?"

Christina crossed her arms. "You can either sign the paper, or we can walk you out the door right now. Technically you have breached confidential business security by disclosing it to other employees. That's not something you want on your permanent record when you're out job hunting."

Dead silence. The tension ran thick as they tensely waited for me to sign the paper. I scowled at the table.

This isn't fair, I thought. I felt like suing them, but I had no lawyer, not enough money to get one, and nowhere else to go. I simply couldn't afford to sue the second biggest phone company in America.

I grabbed the paper and signed.

Christina took the paper away. "Thank you. You may go now."

Gary glanced at his phone. "Isn't it about time for your lunch?"

And so I walked out, retrieving my meal from the packed refrigerator.

I didn't see "Grace" anywhere, and would not see her again until much, much later.

As I sat in the break room, eating some rice and a bit of fish from last night's dinner, I took out a piece of paper, wrote a note to Snakey.

I found Harry standing in his usual favorite spot by the window, plastic bottle of homemade tea in hand, staring through the glass at whatever wildlife that happened to go by the parking lot. "Gary told me you got in trouble for peeking at their new game console."

"Yeah," I stammered, leaving Harry to silently sip his tea.

"See any more invisible men?"

I frowned. "No."

My anxious worry about Snakey must have been visible on my face, for then he asked, "You feeling all right?"

"Yeah. Maybe I'm just tired."

"I have a cousin who's into parapsychology. You know, studying ghosts. She got in the paper one time. I think she's even published a book about it."

At the moment, I couldn't have cared less. "Huh. That's interesting."

"It takes talent to photograph them, but she's really good at it."

I only said "Hmm", glumly stuffing food in my mouth.

Once finished eating, I gathered up as much courage as I could, marching outside in search of the Trans Am.

I looked high and low, but still didn't see it among the rows of parked cars. I saw a car that looked similar, but it didn't look dirty enough to be the one, and the license plate was wrong. I went back inside.

Sure, I could have just asked someone, but I didn't know who to ask.

And so the usual grind resumed. Lots of promises, sporadic payments, and lots of phone activations.

Bills, payment disputes, some guy trying really hard to get account information he wasn't allowed to have.

I took my final break for the day, checking the parking lot once more. No sign of the `damaged' automobile.

When I came back, I found everyone had been assigned a training module. Another lame Power Point thing that should have went to the sales department.

My shift ended. I gathered my belongings and walked outside, checking the lot one last time.

At last I saw the car.

The moment I placed the note, I found my face slamming against the hot metal hood, my arm twisted painfully behind my back.

I saw a white glint, then noticed something sharp pressing against my neck. A brown hand jabbed a finger at my car. "That's your piece of crap yellow Corolla over there, isn't it, buttface?"

(Okay, he said something else, but you know I don't cuss).

I swallowed and nodded.

Out in the middle of nowhere like this, if the guy cut me open, it would take awhile for the cops to get there.

"You know, it was just yesterday when I was thinking, `You know, I sure as hell hope that that dumb bastard with the yellow paint job doesn't do something stupid like try to get away with leaving my front fender headlight all fucked up, especially since we're working in the same damn building.' Judging by that little note you just stuck in the crack of my window, it seems that my preliminary assumption is correct."