The Office Started Replacing My Life Until I Became the Next Supervisor on the List

0:00Hello, I'm Wilkins' stories all the time. The Ladu are here. Let's get into it. The lights overhead sound a usual pale song, every panel identically bright except for one that flickered in a patient morse. It was a friday afternoon, a sort that feels more like a soft landing than a finish line. This hour always belonged to me. Fifty-three minutes after four, between the last print of wine and the first night shift keys jangling at the main doors, the building emptied of old but the hum of air ducts and recycled apologies about forgotten lunchboxes. The echoes in these halls, the neatness of cables tucked behind screens, the way of feigned chemical time hung in the supply closet, this was my time to breathe, check the world back into order, and close the week with dignity it deserved. I passed down the east corridor, shoe scuffing softly in the waxed linoleum, clipped or tucked against my ribs. Outside each door, the department named Shimmerd accounts payable, HR, IT, each with their faded gold letters and fingerprint streaks. The office quieted, exhaling its last routine as voices trickled away, car keys rattling,

1:00a final have a good one drifting down the stairwell. I padded each door handle out of habit locked, locked, slightly loose, just the way Sophie in purchasing liked it. Pumference room she was always empty on Fridays. I nudged the door open, the hide roller closer whining and paused. Florescent shadows were of course the glass table, where someone had left to send it, perfectly one brown loafer. It perched at mid table toe forward, as if invited to the meeting but left behind by herred foot. I ran through a mental checklist, shoes and lost and found, yes, but never on a table alone, immaculate as if staged. I circled the table. This shoe was a moron, the kind with leather that store assisted fingers pressure, laces looped into careful bow. Not my size, not anyone's here, I would have noticed. The room's faint lemon scent meant me not the usual stale coffee or sandwich wrapping. Windows here face the hedge, late sunlight dicing the leaves and striping the walls. On the credenza, the scheduling clipboard lay open. I scanned the sheet no meetings for conference room sees since midweek and nothing for today. I flipped back, checked forward, found nothing. I walked to the corner cabinet, nudged it open.

2:03No sign of anyone. I checked the merchant activated camera in the upper corner by habit, thumbing the security up on my phone. The feed blinked then filled with white static. I thumbed back, scribbed an in nothing. The system must be lagging. I told myself so, then caught my own eye in the glass of flicker of my own reflection, stretched from the convexity, looking older, more drawn than I felt. Behind me, a soft creek sounded from the corridor. My pulse sharpened the way it did before a pipe burst or a wobbly intent dropped a mug. Not footsteps exactly. I took a breath stared at the door's frosted pain. For a heartbeat it looked like a shape lingered there, shoulder and chin my own. Then slid away in sync with my move to check. It was those old hinges I told myself and closed the door with a firmer hand. Leaving the shoe for now, I made for my cut in the hallway pinching the bridge of my nose. Routine is a calm sea, but let one odd thing in wrong shoe, door creek, missing footage and the ripple spoil of the glass. It was still early, the day not yet surrendered. I moved to the next items in the list, running a palm over to smooth plastic corners of the

3:03clipboard, soaking in the order of it before anything else could go sideways. Asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. You have to take pride in these routines, or you'll go stay out faster than last week's break room pastries. My Friday map was well weathered, west wind supply caused it first, because the air they pulled cooler and the fitted sheets lay half folded just so, then the kitchen, replenishing the dish soap, last, a cubicle farm, where stray food wrap was sprouted if left unchecked. At the supply closet, I ran through inventory spare bulbs, cleaning fluids by pH, paper towel rolls by crate. There was a humor to the symmetry of it I could predict almost to the box how many would be left, who'd taken what, who we've complained on Monday if the favourite lemon-centred wipes weren't resoct. Maria, my best junior, passed me on her way to the main lobby, pushing a rattling bin. Her hair was up on smudge with blue pen. Busy today, as she asked, aiming for dry but landing at curious, like she wasn't sure if I caught her sneaking the good trash bags again. Not a soul left in the building, I said, exaggerating. Except for us, how about you, make any messes I need to know about. She grandfossing with an earpiece.

4:04Not this time, oh, market board the tall lad I said to tell you, you'll find it in the training suite, she's got a thing about the vents again. Of course she did. I nodded thanks, turning to my closet kingdom, each shelf lined with pride, everything where it should be. Fridays were for small repairs dozed up, roughastened, screw driver kept ready, each Monday an act of shield against entropy. Lost on fam was like this week, single glove mug-shaped like a frog, we'd be cushioned from God knows when. The box in my office had a scarf green, wool, nearly new, and a kitchen reading a Jamie's keys, that had lived this since before last Christmas. I liked having the odd bit of someone else's life rift in and back out, just a reminder that things lute but always returned to balance. This plants needed rotation, especially for dismembering legal he jammed a pothos under the AC vent again, these crimped and browning. I moved it to the window, feeling for telltale impness. One of the finance girls, Brynn, once asked why I never missed a detail. It's like your psychic, she'd said, handing over the staff birthday list. You catch things nobody else does. Psychics just another word for careful, I joked, but truth was, trust came slow and this

5:06place nobody kept seekers for long, but nobody gave enough away to really know the maider. The emptiness of the building on weekends never made me fret. If anything, it felt like home every surface polished with no one left to see it except me. I'd often think, if someone buried me here with my card unregs, I'd be fine for decades, so long as I could keep the whorls aligned and the air vents enclocked. He even called home, let Kane know I'd be a bit late maybe, but wouldn't be much longer. She laughed, said she'd keep my plate warm. It don't let them work you over time, she said. I described the world as it was, tidy, quiet, all the regular faces gone, nothing much left to put back except for the usual stray mug or window left cracked too wide. Don't worry about me, I'm king of the castle now, I said. Five more rounds and I'll be done. Ah ha, you said that last week too, she teased. But I could hear in her voice she wasn't worried, because nothing in my world ever strayed too far from order. Also I thought, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, cubicle fall next. The sound of my wheels against the cup at square is dull to a slow shuffle.

6:06I followed the rouse, glancing for the familiar forger's espouse and kid, college diplomas, chocolate bars, a thousand little tokens of other people's ires. I nearly walked right past the first desk before it registered, the photo frame faced inward, glass pressed a drywall, a sticky note denying any glimpse of a face. I spun, checked the next desk. Same family, dog hidden, faces turned. By the seventh desk it was clear every personal photograph had been turned to the wall. No accident, this was careful, as if whoever did it wanted to erase the faces, hide him from the Friday sun. I touched the nearest chair wheeled out of skew too far from the desk, turned to face the aisle as if expecting companies standing behind, not the usual belly up alignment from someone sitting down. More mugs, but all is cute, not a single handle pointed to hands reach. I ran through the explanations, sensitivity training. Maybe a surprise prank, a memo I'd miss on humor Friday. I checked the memo board in the break room. No new notice, no staff shout out joking about picture day or such. Of the back wall, near storage, even the monthly wall calendars were off. March 22 for HR, November 2017 for Admin, June 2025 for payroll.

7:11How had I never noticed? Had someone been in just now after I checked their office and before I'd made this round? I planted myself, penpoise at my clipboard, willing myself to remember if I'd reset any of these things today. How and now checked at lunch? Some edges of memory felt mudded like leaving a room and forgetting why. The radio on my cart crackled a scratch of static, abrupt and sharp. I thumbed the receiver off and back on. Static gave way to a voice, clipped in a familiar, too soft and wet at the edges. Check with Margaret, she has the blue binder. Margaret. Her round the staff list in my head, fast, exhaustive no Margaret since two summers ago and nobody by that surname on Genitorial or Admin. The transmission fizzled up before I could answer. My heart thudded, the rhythm of order replaced by a hitch of on this I couldn't shake. I checked the photographs one more time, half-expecting to find my own face blurred or gone from the world outside these cubicles. Asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. I found myself clinging to clipboard so hard the plastic dug into my palm, a tight reassurance of the here and now. If it was a joke, it was overdue for a punchline.

8:12I turned purposeful circles for setting chairs, realigning frames, correcting mugs, moving with mounting efficiency. Objects slid easily beneath my hands, but none quite felt as they should. My own familiarity was failing me, shifting like a migranara. It was when I checked my own notes that the world slid truly sideways. I opened the numbered sheet from last night's finish and expected my crumped bluink, dates, tasks, tidy squares for tic-mocks. Instead, half the entrance written in a looping, left-handed scroll I'd never used referred to people I had never met, for dentists tea, facilities replace ventfilter, or rufka supplies for break room fridge. There were a dent in unfamiliar shorthand, initials, numbers, all not in my system. I tore the sheet clear, checked the paper's texture regular stock from my pad but altered, as if someone had slip found him nursing between my own interests. I dumped them teeth sat tight into the nearest trash. As the papers hit the bottom, a glimpse candy rubbers luggers blood, colors wrong, not from this country, maybe not from this decade. One had reverse letters, the buckoed shimmering as if out of focus. I saw it being another cubicle's receipts for business dinners at restaurants I'd never

9:14heard typed in a language the slip from clarity the longer I stared. At Maria's desk, a receipt for a perpetual solutions coffeeer who were there, with a date that blinked through digits, never settling. It was supposed to be the same floor as always, but now sign had seemed off. An extra exit sign blinked beside the printer closet when had that gone up. The restaurant or along the south wall mirror de-east, an impossible trick of layout. One of the ceiling tiles at the end of the hole had a water stain, but I remembered patching at corner clean last week. Delivator at the admin block chained a triangle of brass flashing floor 13. There was no 13, the company always batted about 12 tidy levels. The doors opened, a faint and deceptic chill mixed with an oily staleus. I kept my foot on the threshold, doubting my own mind, but curiosity won. Inside the usual mirrored walls reflected a frame taller than mine, legs too thin but my face. The buttons B, G, 212, and then unlit but prison 13. I pressed it why not. The elevator lurged. The digital panel jitter, 267pm, then a PM.

10:15The time started and flared. When the doors lid opened, I expected pranks there well, maybe nothing more. But the floor beyond was identical, yet wrong at the corners. Archados and familiar carpeting, a chemical almond scent I'd never trace before. Some on hits gold welcomed survey team on a whiteboard, blue and grunning with tears. I snapped the door shut heart thudding. Back in the familiar lobby, I spotted the late guard, Kellan, leaning against the reception counter, shoes up on a low stool. Dark air, beetle block eyes, weathered face. He'd been kind lately, not one for office games. You see anyone run through just now. I asked for a scapecat. He glanced behind him thinking. Nope, was the survey team not finished yet, thought did been here all afternoon. I blinked. We don't have a survey team, Kellan, not scheduled, not on the log. He shrugged, unconcerned. Maybe it was a mix up, he offered finger-stressing his badge line out, Miss Matt striped I hadn't noticed before. For room sees always got them in on Fridays though. He lumbered off before I could argue, humming something half remembered.

11:16I stood there, wishing he'd been jerking, but his tone was too bland for a prank. I brace myself, gathered the abandoned coffee mugs, wiped down door handles, forced myself to finish the routine. At my own cart, a mocha did not own sight, right at the edge. Its logo turned soft to molten red italics, beneath an image that slid between a spinning top and a shoe depending on how you tilted it. Astrosk, astrosk, astrosk. Saturday I expected a silent building ghostly but mine. At this time I heard the hush-shift voices muttering beneath the humma vents. I convinced myself it was pipes, maybe the loose cover above the legal office keening in the AC. On the second floor, a door shut soft as a sigh, but I found nothing behind it to just a thick dust on the conference table and touch it before it increased where perhaps a pencil rolled. From the hallway, muffled voices filtered, a cadence of speech with gaps. I pressed my ear to the door, but found only the coal varnish, and when I pushed inside, stark emptiness. There was a scrap of paper on a desktop in the admin-bulb and pleno-page torrent at the spiral, in crowned print, Wednesday, Kellen's goodbye lunch.

12:18I frowned. Kellen had not left. I saw him Friday, expected him tonight. Quick resolution always, he'd say, no fuss. I called his extension on a whim his muffled voice answered, same as ever. I doubted myself then because all my explanations were stacking up crooked and I couldn't remember if Kellen had said anything about leaving. In the north-west corner office meant to face the sun, I paused, staring. Outside the glass, winter trees, heavy with snow, drooping in gusts that left patterns curling up the pain. But the air was warm, September slick, my own sleeve rolled up against the heat. I wrapped the glass half-expecting it to frost beneath my fingers, but it was just ordinary, double glazed, no chill at all. Confounded, I dialed Marie in my reliable right hand. You ever see anyone odd in here last week? I tried to sound light. She snorted, voice distant. It's always weird on weekends, isn't it probably just Dennis making the rounds, he burns through coffee, or that new girl Rooka, right? I hesitated, adult panic rising. What Dennis? After, at last. She laughed again, chalking my questions up to long ire's.

13:20There has always been a Dennis tea, on maintenance, I think he only works evenings, don't let it get to you, okay, want me to cover a shift next week if you're tired. I reassured her I was fine even as her voice carried the faintest echo as if played back from a distance, or through event. When I hung up, my phone buzzed her number unlisted, blank field. One message came, don't move the shoe. It's not meant for you. Asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. Monday, I arrived early. Needed to reassert Dominion, rast order from whatever dream devil had gotten into the building this weekend. My clipboard on my own desk now bore a sheet I had not written task to assigned, boxes checked in precise, living letters, tasks from Superveza V, lemma. My badge, clip beside my phone, was stamped with a logo I hadn't seen as swoop of deep blue of a block text, interview systems. I rolled the plastic between my thumb and finger, felt its edges legitimate as real as any corporate tag. I risked the security archive again, seeking Friday's missing ires from conference room see. Instead, I found the camera feed have lipped in you, nothing that a freeze frame, then a flicker of movement, a grey-shaped perch to the table.

14:21The figure crossed a leg over the other, left foot bear. One brown loaf of visible, just like my non-atayon day, the way is sometimes set between checklists. The rest walled into pixel static, indistinct but somehow holding my own posture, my own way of hunching, head cocked. I looked up, out the window, the view shimmered green, and dusk, then noon again as I walked past. This guy over a set in jumps, the light never quite matching its reflection and the glass. I hurried to the foyer, tested doors each seen in place, but the sunlight warped, made shapes on the floor that spelled I was out of order. In Admin, a window-faced sunrise that the clock saw read eleven past midnight. My memory once crisp, a ledger I could trust in as sprouted gaps. The time was the coffee delivery last week. Did I fill this up stalks today, or was that ghost work something imagined? Where was the mug I brought from home, the one with the faded blue stripes? Uncertainty pried up the corners of routine, letting in something cold. I needed to see from myself if order could be imposed. I steadied my grip squared my drawer and set out to complete every round as usual. Back to conference room-sea where it began.

15:23The shoe was gone. In its place, at the centre of the table, sat plastic children's toy, something out of place by decades, then intent a red-spinning top, its sides dolled from use, catching bits of the cold fluorescent light and gummy sweeps. I reached out of hand, and for a moment, my own shadow stretched beneath fluorescent glare extending longer than my reach, as if the room asked for someone else. The toy rested still, but I thought, for a blink, I saw it spin. I held the clipboard to my chest like a shield, and the hush swallowed the last sure-shape of the afternoon. The hush swallowed the last sure-shape of the afternoon. My breath, not quite even, hissed as I edged toward the table. If someone wanted to get a rise out of me, junior staff, night security, were some clever system for the Friday prank they would have left a sticky note and joke, sentry spaking for attention. But this did quite the single red-spinning top resting in the centre suggested something else. I reached for the toy, stopped. My fingers hovered, uncertain if the plastic felt cold, or if I was just chilly from sweat that had nothing to do with building temperature. I nudged the top softly, so it shifted a half turn, then stopped.

16:24Nothing happened. It seemed to thicken syrupy and felt with a faint sand-hingen oil rust someone's after shift from three years ago. My hands shook a little as I withdrew. Back in the hallway, my coat stood where I'd parked it. I glanced side to side, flushing panels bleaching everything, my shirt, my hand, the inside of my eyelids. The top seemed to hum between my ears as I walked away. I pressed my hand to my chest, counting the beats all to superstition to anchor myself. You work here, you run the place. These are your rounds. I wrapped my knuckles against the nearest wall and turned back, only to find a door to conference room seized two inches open again, though I'd heard it latch. I shot it firmly, listened for the click of the hardware, then rolled my card along the western corridor. That simple rhythm was come for a check, lock, wipe, move on. But every step joked something loose inside. Each officer passed, I gave a quick glance in, never pausing long enough for any reflection to take root. Approaching accounting, an odd keening came from above the ceiling tiles a mechanical wine, anxious and cyclical, as if some duck fan had developed a cough.

17:24I told myself to file a request for age-fack in the morning, but the sensation act twinned with the spinning top nerve-ibrating in my memory. At the stairwells, my badge press is normal against the axis pad. The green light flicked on, then purpled the door unlocked. A small thing, but not the code this building used. It was possible, I suppose, if you ran this place long enough, you'd see every quirk, every misdune light panel or badge reader. But that wasn't true today, or I'd never have made it to supervisor. I pressed a head. At the junction beside each ar, my foot slid a fragment of white paper underfoot. I stooped, picked it up. Per remind Dennis, elevator inspection, 10am, in that messy script againning blue as motel pool water. When I discarded the note with old wrappers and torn rubber gloves, I caught a glimpse violet foil reflecting back at me, just where the candy wrappers glimmed from before. The brand name had finished us dissolve, now it was just glyphs twitching with my angle of view, as if the world itself didn't want me to pass it. Alright, I muttered loud enough for the rouse of cubes to hear, enough games for one afternoon. But there was no retort.

18:25Only the low mechanical drone of the condensing coil above the admin wing and summer deeper, the sharp heel of a landline fun two tones, then silence. I wheeled my cart to the service clauses again. This was meant to be the firewall, my buffer space. There's comfort and plastic stacked by size, blue bags compressed by folds choke quite bleach bottles arrayed by strength. They reminded me of home, cereal box is tall to short, side to fridge, gaselep aside by side, never stagger, a universe shrunk to orders comfort. Inside, something new glimmered from the middle shelf, a plastic ID badge with a logo like a broken spiral, the name typed in uneven letters as shame, survey. I pocketed it unsure whether to bring it to lost and found or throw it away. The air in the closet seemed thin out with the door closed, my own breath scored little clouds against the shelf where I exhaled. I popped through the racks, each one as I'd left it except there was an extra bundle grain microfiber monogram V L. I shut the closet and glance at my watch a good watch, give from K Sturdy honest. The second hand ticked erratically, then froze in the seven. I snapped it twice, got the hands moving again, but the momentary stutter set my teeth grinding.

19:27Back out in the service corridor, Maria's voice rang near the elevators. She was telling a story something about her little brother and the copy machine, loved her trailing into the chillier. You have to see this, she called, waving at him his paper stack as if nothing else were wrong in her universe. She didn't look at me as I rolled by, eyes fixed on the paper jam like it was a punchline only she understood. I raised a hand, washed her fur or her brow. He'd going up or down, she asked. Down, I lied just to keep things normal. I waited for the elevator, but when the doors opened, Maria was gone and there were no footsteps at all. Inside was a clipboard in the floor, identical to mine, but for the logo interview again sent backwards so that each letter mirrored its twin. I crouched to retrieve it, then thought better. Out on the second floor, I crossed into the kitchen, where sunlight had always glanced off the fridge in the late iris, warming the tiles enough to keep a loaf of bread soft until Monday. But the sun was gone, the window's blood only static grey. I opened a fridge, scanning for usuals of wedger brie, half finished lunches, someone's yogurt.

20:28Instead, the shelves held only slices of white bread, each packaged loose, each with survey written in marker. I shut the door, harder than intended, and the light in the freezer blinked, first blue, then off. The humstopter of the room grew quieter. I stood in the slight chill, hands braced against the counter, willing the world to fall back into its lanes. On the chalkboard above the sink, someone had written. Monday, birthday, V, Lama, desk 228, free from survey cake. I did not have a desk number 228. I did not, to my knowledge, have a birthday that week. Cake, sure, birthdays, not in turn November. Back to the corridor, hands trembling now. I needed to text Kane needed to hear her explain something, complain about dinner, joke about paperwork. For a second, my phone was filled with old messages or photo her voice, all proof that out there was one order I could understand. I thumbed a new message, running late, saved me some dessert, weird date, love you. But the phone, halfway through the word love, shut itself down. The screen flickered. When it came back, the unread messages doubled, tripled half from a no numbers, half from contacts

21:29I didn't remember ever saving. I scrolled, looking for her name. Thun. I scrolled faster, thumb trembling. Maria. Bren. Kellen half the numbers were repeated, doubled with slight spelling errors, Kellen, amarja. I called the first K. I could find. A breathless woman answered, sharp, voice and unfamiliar. Year late, she said. Excuse me? After Ninchet's newly done, she replied, then hung up with a click that ran too close to the phone speaker. I pocketed the device, exhaled a shaky laugh, and tried the walkie radio again anything to crack the surface. Static. A bit of hiss. Then. I must be completed before roll call, checked for missing items, message shoe left behind, table clear. A man's voice on familiar cadents put their regional accent, I couldn't pin. I thumbed the button, pressed to reply, something automatic, rehearsed, a plea for clarity. Who is this? Maria, is that you? No response. A short, looping wine. The radio speaker bus then died. I was unraveling, and knew it, but no one would have seen it on the outside.

22:30I checked my badge again, stole the wrong company, stole my initials, all the reverse now, lemmer fee. And the department, time mine operations. Not custodial, not my domain. After noon had slid sideways, even the clock in the lobby now blinked 88 between proper iris. My mind's gittered. The lights, usually a grid of white cubes, had started to dim out of order, hatch a here and there, a color washed in, blue or yellow, as if the gels from the holiday party found their way into the fixtures. Time for more drastic action. On the fire, stares each step cast a shadow to, tall, tooth and naher, at taking them to your stretch. In the basement, the air was heavier, old with radiator steam and chemical time. The doors, here bore plaques I had never read, archavers surveys, a timeline office authorised personnel, a lost in kept. Lost in kept how paused. I'd always thought that was a dry joke, someone's label for them up room. But the door was real, called to the touch. I picked it its latch with a ring of off's keys, the mechanical click, and ease of decades old hardware breathing stale air as it's one wide. Inside, fluorescent light, low and buzzing, revealed rows of boxes each section labeled

23:34in that sim looping, wrong-handed script. Vagis, mugs, keys, calendars, all tagged with names. Revka, Dennis T. S. Cham. Some boxes labeled return, others serve a team do not remove. I rifled one, an old photo, stuff line up, faces gum blurrier at the edges. The encroled as a fut. Tools, months out of order repeating February, skipping June, two July's per year. I sat among other people's things touching a mug I'd never owned, sorting through calendars aided years wrong, now certain no prank could achieve this. This was design, or decay, or something older and slippery between. Above, a clang in a duct laughter, then voices, overlapping, almost chanting, survey team, lost one left the shoe, don't forget the spinning top, new suit provides a must sign off. The woods echoed through the vent work until the pitch fell too low to understand. I took one badge Rookas, batter, plastic fort, with age slipped it in my pocket. At least if my name vanished, I'd have another to answer to. Moving back up the stairs, I passed Dennis T. But someone introducing himself by that name scrubbing a disdain that hadn't been that

24:36last week. Thin bald, eyes too dark. Almost done here. I asked Faining normalcy. He nodded, never meeting my gaze. Survey at three, he sat then, softer. You don't want to lose things, not on this shift, lost things stay. I pushed past too quickly. His odor greased and osun lingered on my sleeve like a mark. Back on the ground floor, the copper room was filled with papers, noters, faxes, memos, messages for people I'd never met, urgent, survey full to Kelin's desk, the lost, loose shoe, contact time in my office. The snout was off, toner, and something Metallica couldn't quote name. Norma was drifted through the open door's voices, utterly normal, discussing coffee orders, cake, alleges. I followed to the admin lounge, where five or six staff sat circle to round a table. When I knew there was brun from finance, hair twisted in her habitual top knot, a man with a blonde beard, I dimly recognised from once fixing the lobby clock, and three others with no connection, but all gazing at the centre of the table. Rusting there was another spinning top yellow, now, patched with red and blue squares.

25:36My route home seemed blocked by faces, laughter bubbling just below normal speech. I found myself invited to sit, but declined, excusing myself to finish rounds. This mile stitched the air. Like, maybe, we're just too wide. They called after me, overlapping voices, supervisor V, lemmer don't forget roll call at dusk. The name at least matched, but rolled off their tongues like a brand new word. Outside, the building's shadow fell at an impossible slant, covering the parking lot while the sun overhead glared. Near the entrance, the sign now re-interview systems cover a campus. No trace of our old logo. As I hesitated, the phone in my pocket vibrated. A new text this time with an all caps header, reminder, supervisors return all items spinning top reported to you accounted for, do not remove further objects. I hid reply, trying to text again some feeble tether to the wall behind the glass, but every word vanished from the screen before I could hit send. I stopped through the pinging foyer, made for the staff locker bay. There, a row of shoes lined up, brown loafers, two sizes too large, all toes forward,

26:37paired but slightly askew. My locker number 11 contained my duffel bag, lunch pale, but nothing else. Someone had added a scarf, green wool folded nearly atop my coat. Not mine though I recognized the brand, attacked for a rick-a-loss and kept. I ran cold. Everything here was being rearranged, catalogued, measured in reverse. Beneath the scarf, a lus-andritan in that looping script. Ah. Ah. Sign off as fee, lamer. At the bottom, a note, cake at three p.m. you'll want to remember. I stepped out the world for now, not with exhaustion, but as if the edges of the building in each wall, corridor, lounge skidded, receding from scents. In the glass, my reflection lagged, movements of fraction late. A gargled call from the corridor startled me. My hands flew to my badge, now hot against my chest. The doors along admin winked open, fragments of conversation, laughter, spilled out, chasing the branded scent of lemon polish and ozone. I followed them, searching for a way out but every rut looped back to the foyer, the clop blinking time till survey, 015. I needed to assert control, anything to drag the place back into scents.

27:40My clipboard knew, not mine, but stamped with a timeline not to hell the checkers. Complete survey room runs. Confirm lost items. Attempt hand over briefing. Report to supervisor by end of shift. I checked each box, pen wobbly, my handwriting slipping between letters I recognized and foreign curls. Across the hole, Kehlens voice, commas ever, drifted back to me, I found him at the security station, sipping-bab-vending machine-coffee. Rough day. I tried. He shrugged. His Friday somewhere right? He grinned, but his lips didn't match the smile. Conference see, I said, lowering my voice. What happened in there? He nodded at the monitor clusters. Always a meeting, supervisor, even if nobody comes, sometimes the survey team leaves the things behind, sometimes that's all there is. I stared at him. You ever do the hand of her, you remember the last one? His eyes went flat. Don't linger too long, lemma, best thing you can juice keep moving, put the top back, make sure your shoes are in order. As they turned to go, his walk-it as hip-his-and-chirp supervisor lemma roll coal-in-tan report.

28:43Upstairs, the world had dimmed to grey-green again. Outside, the tree branch is bending when that didn't exist, there leaves blurring into winter and back. At conference room-sea, the light seemed colder, shadows leaning toward the center table. On the table, the spinning top stopped, his red edge-nicked, just as I'd left it, as if it had never shifted at all. And yet, under the table, a pair of footprints down in dust one left, one right, then another faint-set, smaller, overlapping. My on? How to tell? I walked in slow, knee-stiff, copied the footprints and stood at the head seat. Set the clubboard down, tried to stack the facts, line routine, forced the world into order by sheer presence. But the air was cold enough, and the world did not yield. I turned the toy over in my hand. On its underside, it scrolled in childlike blue pen, two words. Stay here. The silence yawned wide and no closing bell, no voices, not even the hum of the lights. Only the hush, swallowing everything beyond my trembling hands, and the scratched surface of the spinning top. And then acquired, summer not far away, the beginning of a laugh, or the end of a sigh

29:45followed by the distant, familiar click of a door swinging open and shutting. The spinning top didn't budge, though my hands tingled, as if the table itself had given a small, warning jerk. I squinted it down, the red plastic, glared up, lids guffed and sides gummy with age. Stay here, scrolled in blue that almost bled through. Outside, the faint, sourceless laugh of sigh faded into a hashes thick and watchful as a lock-fault. I swallowed, and the sound jostled caged in my throat. I did not sit. Though as a rule inside me, a superstition bred out of decades hauling muscle and habit through this building, you don't sit till you finish. Move, keep hands occupied, there's your armor. So I reached again for the toy, then stopped, feeling the run as crutch somewhere just outside the door, waitless, but prepared to fall. I circle comforts roomcy once, knuckles graze in the back of every spun plastic chair. I force myself to count, eight seats, all present, though the cushioning on to seam the shabin, as if someone heavier had just risen. When I tried the room's lights, the panels above shuttered, flickered, then steadied into the metal blue glare of late evening, never the warm yellow of day. The hallway beyond was choked air calcified with lemon and ozone, more sier than sweet.

30:49I heard the faint chime of an elevator at much too distant for any step to follow. The corridor, in my memory, ran 30 yards in a dog-like bend. Now it stretched straight, endless, and at the vanishing and the eggs it signed poles to color somewhere between red and green. Flet board clutched to my chest, I listened, desperate for the hinge cry of a swinging door on Marie's laughter. Nothing. The muffled click resumed the door knob, slow and metallic, further away than I could easily reach. I etched out, checked the security phone in my pocket. Dad's. Not dead is empowered off just black glass, a lump, no sign of a world outside this one. A trimmer in my right thigh, not pain, not panic, but some new static were muscle remembered a warning before the rest of me did. I started to roll my cart down the corridor quite, measured steps. Each door gleamed, plucked polished, time in office, the survey prepped no entry, lost and kept. All were written fresh and unfamiliar fonts, as if a new company had moved in overnight. There was no trace of custodial, let alone my own domain. I should have felt fear by now, gone to ground, fallen to have managed emergency maintenance,

31:51even called Kellyn, who steady hands always had the key to coer'd a grin. But my mind's stuttered, refused the true edge of panic and felt a listing, cataloging, routine. I modest tests for myself a letter to trying to wedge sense back into the world, infantor result, check floor map, lock supply, closet, return items to found. An ascent and creek echoed from the main elevator, as if it opened then hesitated. Down the hall the barge reeder flicked purple, not green. I pressed my badge interview again, not my building, but the doors unlocked with a defeated sigh of their own, letting me through. In the reception nook, the walls showed a different ear on every clock. One marked service staff spun faster than the wrist. The whiteboard diagram beside the intake desk listed round after round of handover pro with calls and timeline confirmations. Every staff name had been crossed out and rewritten each in a new hand. The, lemmer, a mine, then scribbled over with the rickahand of her pending. I changed. I was not just the supervisor, I was something in transition, a name on a list due for revision. Deep built as I returned to the locker bay, near the double doors leading to the lot.

32:53The sense that if I left, the line holding my memory, the real pulse of my own day would snap and I tumble into the static forever. I pulled my locker open, peered at my possessions. Scarf, green, wool, tag-worn, dumb, but still legible, returned to rickah. The badge for interview, my name barely visible under a swipe of correction fluid. A pair of brown shoes saw some one, as if waiting to be tried on for the first time. The morning's routine, the week's patent gone. I had become a new lion and someone else's log, copied three neckos of old staff and whatever world, layered or side by side, was pressing in around us. In a distance, a walkie-talkie shrilled. Supervisor, lemme serve a meeting, conference-y, bring report, hand over begins in five. The voice was thin, uncanny threaded with static but undeniable. I clenched my list, pressed my toes into shoes that still felt only partly mine, and forced myself down the corridor each step echoing loud as stumpied in the dead breath gloom. The conference room was full of faces when I arrived, crowded but not quite close. Stranger and almost familiar glances turned at my entrance. No one smiled, precisely, but half a dozen people nodded and sink as if coached, or as

33:56if remembering a habit once shared and long and practiced. On the table the red spinning tops that motionless. Around it, the single brown loafer, a child Scarf, a mug with its logo and blow to talix. Named tags in front of each seat except mine, I recognised some though the letters came out wrong Rivka, Dennis T. S. J. Helen leaned in a far corner, half lost behind a shade cast by a projector that was never used. The oldest woman present hair cropped, sit jacket too wide at the shoulders tap the spinning tops so it whirled, humming loose in the glass. Hand over begins, she in tone, voice both familiar and warped by dialect had never heard. Supervisor Lemmer, your late, sit. They turned to make room at the head, scraped chair for an unwilling king. I hesitated, but the room made it clear if this was the only seat left. I settled a backstaff, breath ragged. The woman continued, survey protocols required full acknowledgement of all items left behind, report, please. I'd lost the throw, lost every cheat sheet. As some machine in me had learned to mimic order, to keep itself from drowning. Items accounted for, I recited with a kid inside use all my life, spinning top, brown

34:59loafer, children's scarf, mug, extras in loss and kept timeline lock a trailed off, my chest kicked under my ribs, fearful of the blank spaces. A man, the necked with a badge labelled Dennis, scribbled a check mark and pushed a sheet toward me. Time for the rolling item, he modded, not meeting my eyes. Don't wander, tending up ties, it gets hard to close roll if you have duplicates. I scrolled something the shape of my name were close to it. The badge I'd worn since this morning now displayed just a VL with no department. Kellen spoke at last for slow tire. Survey team never liked staying late, just do the handover, Lemmer, don't let the old thing pile up. I looked down. The spinning top stilled, it stepped pointing away from me toward a seam in the glass table. I fumbled the badge in my pocket ruckus, the only other real name were as close to it that anyone seemed to use. I placed it gently beside the spinning top. The name tags slid together edges of relaping as if magnetic. The air in the room thicken drew itself close. The lights up of turn blue, them parable. Handover complete, the woman announced.

35:59Supervisor Lemmer, please confirm, this is the last roll call for the afternoon shift. I opened my mouth to answer when, outside the glass walls, the world seemed to jump as if the building itself had hiccoped. The clock blinked down past zero of the iron of dismissal or else the iron of vanishing. Some or far off of foam began to ring. Pressure rushed in behind a handover as if the building itself exhaled left over staff and tasks. The room's occupants stood almost in unison, scraping chairs as they rose, collectives of old fashioned cuts as half remembered, half automatic. No one lingered. The red spinning top provoked at the table center as if expecting my next move. When I looked at the windows, the exterior world rippled. A rotten visual starter cough has parked a woodland swirling snow, bleached green sun, then summer again. A street lamp out of nowhere then gone. My own reflection flickered pale across the glass, wearing the scarf that now rested on the table before me. It had appeared from nowhere, neatly folded. I couldn't tell if anyone still walked in or out of the conference room. Each time I tried to follow the shifting of bodies, the corners of my eyes blurred and

37:00swam, so I focused on lists, objects, tasks. Anything more personal fear, longing, memory hurt like a paper cut. I watched the meeting dissolve. The badges left behind, spin in tops knocking up against shoe soles and moccandals, all created an inventory only I seemed to truck. When I tried to rise, my knees buckled and something in my hip popped as if sunken with ears I couldn't recall living. More than fatigue I felt inherited exhaustion, tiredness of dozen stacked atop each other, all responsible for closing some unending, tedious soviet. Flushing, I forced my right knee to lock, sending at last. The tabloid stay, tops gaff, wedges, the stale air send of fainday, and all signs of staff now scattered, murmuring behind the blinds and offices that had not been on this floor day ago. Another voice, distant but immediate, flared from the conference phone, supervised olemmer, please confirm this items, shift cannot end until room clear. I stared at the red spinning top. The blue and connet's base stay here faded, as a sweater of time was eating the message away. I gripped the chair back, shocked by the cold sweat on my palm. As I took the scarf, it's wait felt and possibly familiar, like an old favour, unreturnable

38:03but expected. As the corridor, the elevator bill chained again, prolonged, every pitch bent flat. A shadow appeared at the glass, a woman, hair cropped, suit much too wide, pacing the threshold. She did not knock, only pressed her hand to the glass, the other clutching a children's mug. A furrow was unwilling to open. She receded slowly as if suckback were done a wrong angle corridor. Her path left the edge of my field of vision prickling, the way a draft finds the nape in an old house. I left conference room see at last, braving the corridor. On the hall, Dennis lingued by the lock of bay, retreating at my approach, murmuring, shifts never done unless the new things are returned. He glanced at a box, he carried shoes, spinning tops, the badge for S-chain on top. Other lockers were slightly ajar, as if someone had just checked their contents and hopes of a forgotten thing. Mine was empty but for an old note and sign, roll call zero, leave shoe and bay, check the scarf. The idea struck only by moving the objects back might escape the freeze of the handover. I returned to conference room see, replaced the spinning top at centre, used the scarf to the seat marked for Rooka and pressed my badge fee.

39:05Lammer, whatever that meant onto the table. As the last badge landed, the lights in the ceiling snapped from blue to gold to deep confused grey. The thumb of Furtful's varnish, the corridors, were now lined with reflections not quite my own pale and eager to slip away. I paced from room to room, trying every route out the north stairwell, the east-fire door, the elevator whose panel still dared me to press the teen. Each time, I ended up back in out my reception, drawn by the beacon glow of their timeline office and its blinking whiteboard. Inside timeline, rows of calendars paraded across the walls August, followed by December, July, backed up to February, repeated dates blurring into the cells. I rifled through the mess, hand-strumbling a receipts that out, survey confirmation, supervisor Kellen, dynasty, Rooka, Lammer pending. From the ceiling, a metallic cough voices, knock out in unison and toned from behind the tiles, complete the server, don't forget to sign the list, handover must be completed, the afternoon shift is not meant to last. I rocked on my heels, aware that most of what I heard was now less from outside, more growing from inside, as if the floor plens themselves willed me forward. Walkie-talkie, pressed cold at my hips, bit a ragged report, last survey incomplete,

40:09Lammer time remaining, zero, returned found item. Each phrase lulled, in its way, but built out a dread I could almost smell the greasy metallic scent of a world of mode. I retreated from timeline, seeking the stairwell. Outside the office doors, the light changed iron by the minute lush sunlight chasing squalls of snow, then went to dusk, then glittering streetumps that shone on nothing. The parking lot beyond the main glass was empty, not merely of cars, but of any sign the world ever pressed against this place. I tried the main doors, inked them and felt the vacuum tug that meant the security system was in its after-Iose modes. Vagges tried in each slot, changed nothing. The glass showed my own reflection now, but subtly wrong, short-low go-round bed reversed, a thin grey line parting my hair on the opposite side of where I'd sold it. Returning to the admin lounge, I found the staff directly tacked to the court wall. Her name had been marked through only the heading survey team remained penned and gleaming blue. My own name laminated in thin tentative script. Well, after it muffled and deranged, fluttered behind a closed office. I pressed my ear to the wood, hearing my own name folded into the sound of refrain or

41:11joke or warning impossible to tease apart. Each syllable now in invasion. Down in the kitchen, the air was no longer stale, but nearly sweet sugar, frosting, old cake moldering by the sink. I peeled back plastic wrap. A sheet cake and touched before a wedge-missing, happy hand of her Supervisor V. Hell, iced in the center. The by-taken from the missing wedge left a lip of blue for a die clean to the knife a child's plastic fork sat beside the plate. My appetite fled. I found myself wiping the countertop as if order applied to these things. I dumped the fork, cradled the knife metal stole sticky, but cold, very cold. I thought if I cut another piece, maybe the world would reset again, looped back to a safer teen. But as I lifted the blade, the air shifted, my reflection doubled, and the microwave thus a second self, watching on with narrowed, disappointed eyes. I threw everything in the bin, covered it with paper towels. Trash out of sight. Proof that if one thing left, another ticket to place. Behind me, the PA system sparked a life. Supervisor Lemma, last reminder's handover must not be delayed. Shift can off-complete until lost items are returned.

42:13Please report to conference C for Oracle. This time, it wasn't a voice I recognized. Floor by floor, the world fragmented. The elevator, when summoned, opened onto floors that had never existed, a third floor annex whose walls rocked as if underwater, a river lost and fanned pluck our jagged in its lettering at the end of a side hallway. My full voice has recited names I recognized, and many I did not. Each trip through the building was a new map of panic, a fresh cartography of confusion. Staff emerged from corners, emerged from glass walled offices, only to dissolve again when I tried to fix them in memory, remember when Blick ran the mailroom, one ass, teeth shining too white in the pale blue glare from her monitor. I could not. Yet I wanted to. I wanted the place to slot together to name every face and check every item as routine demanded. The genitorial cart, one I trusted for years, now sat at the crossroads between operations and payroll and you might approach it on top, spending logo betraying no company I knew. I picked it up. My handprint bled sweat into the glaze, the smell that came up as not coffee but singed plastic and lemon cleaner, layered over something faintly organic muscle rot.

43:16Which Helen, last familiar anchor, leaned in a doorway, radioed his chest. He finished your rounds, he asked, no hint of irony. I'm not sure what's left, I managed. Always something left behind in this place, he said, voice and yielding. Building was never lined up right, I hear there are wings nobody finish, door was open into nothing. The longing in his voice bordered on reverence and fear. Did you ever leave? I asked trembling despite myself. Look at my lunch, did it ever happen? He shrugged lips perced. Feels like it did, sometimes feels like I watched someone else's lunch. Never know what's your own, what's carry over from survey. They built this place rum, lemma, none of the rooms line up. He handed me a slip of paper half creased. He might need this if things get out of hand. On the paper, a list of names none I recognize except mine. The next item, returned to Rivka, scrolled and indelined. When I checked the bathroom mirror, my reflection split into three, one wore my shirt backward, one my hair part the runway, all of them clutching in unfamiliar badge.

44:16I splashed water on my face, hoping for any renewal self, any amount from the wax of confusion. But the water ran yellow, then clear. My badge, under the stream, bubbled along the edges as if washing away its own name. The arrows outside psyched a dusk, then snow, then hard spring rain, none of attaching the glass. The world was on a loop, or maybe the building itself was. Each corridor spat me back to what conference room see. The PA boomed again, echoing now without a clear origin, supervisor to conference see, hand over and complete, final roll call. I knew I would end up there, no matter how many routes I tried to trace away from it. The longest walk of all followed, down the main hall, past IT, where servers buzzed and monitors flickered with mirrored error coats. The staff kitchen stand of old kick, half a dozen cups stacked in the sink, branded and unbranded and all stamped survey team. At every turn, I found lost things waiting for me shoots golf, the spinning top heeched demanding placement, acknowledgement, return. When I reached conference room see, the doors won't open before my hand found the knob. This time, the table was not empty. Dissons of objects lined the center, sorted into faded ranks, mugs, shoes, tattered scarves,

45:20spinning tops in every color. Staff dozens of them, faces blurred or winsing, whispering and overlapping single notes crowded the seat so stood behind, clutching badges and not meeting my eyes. Every chair was filled except the one at the head. My name printed crisp and blank, marked the seat. Supervisor V. Lemmer. The blue suited woman unchanged except for new streaks of gray in her hair, nodded. Broke all complete, she said, except for you. Hands clutching the edges, I walked the perimeter, cataloging each item, ticking invisible boxes in memory. The urge to slot each into its place up weighed even the will to flee. Order demanded tribute. Suggestured to the head seat, I sat the silence cracking like all vinyl. She spun the top. It whirled, stuttering in a circle, blurring the room's reflection along its face. Irregularities persist, she murmured, eyes on the toy. Shall we resolve the discrepancy, supervisor, who should be listed as missing? A rumble of voices, some pleading, some mocking, drowned the length of the table. Who remembers, who is gone, who is next?

46:21I. My drug clamped. Everyone was looking at me, waiting for the answer only I could not give. Not because I didn't know, but because every name slid sideways in my mind flickering into gaps and duplications. The question was a ritual, final in binding, who is missing now, and who will remember. My hands shook up of the glass table. I tried to recall everyone, Kay, Maria, Kellen, Brinn, all the regulars, even Dennis and Rivka. I tried to make a perfect list, but with every second of silence, two new names replaced everyone I managed to fix. A voice mine, but not whispered in chorus with the others. As the spinning top began to slow, the room pal was dimming and sharpening with every staggered spin. Who is missing? Who remains? My own answer never surfaced, as if my mind itself deferred to the spinning road plastic, the object that survived every hand of her every roll call. The line between my world and the host is self-completely. The meeting, the table, the artifacts, the staff now all seemed inside me, or I inside them. I saw myself multiplied in the glass, bad reversed, blue in Kellen across the plastic,

47:22supervised appending, where once my name stood boldly. Somewhere inside me, the last catalog closed, but nothing was truly accounted for. The table lurched. The top claddered and stalled. The woman at my left gently folded to green wool's garl, flaying it to rest beside my badge. Final hand of her is witnessed, shintone, voice at once relieved entire. Supervisor, please complete the last task. Kellen hunts at the end, nodded once, gaze fading into middle distance. You'll want to move quickly, lemmer, and shift. A tremor ripped through the light, some dying, others flickering alive, panic chasing presence around the cables overhead. Staff faded, then returned, the voices blending into the drift of air, impatient, hungry, patient all the same. The spinning top, silent, seemed to lean toward me, the plastic surface scratched where a thousand hands mine are there as had tapped up rituals of inventory, inspection, sign off. I knew what to do. I had always known, as surely as a new every corner of my own domain. Touching the clipboard in one hand and the spinning top in the other, I stood. My knees ached, muscle trembling were cold.

48:25I walked a steady and broken line around the table, placing each object back to its label space badge for badge, scarf for scarf, mug for mug, shoe for shoe. The staff watched, silent and still, as I set the spinning top at the centre of the table. The blue ink stay here vanished as the light struck its side. I stacked the last mug beside it straight in the green scarf, set the brown loaf for parallel with the tabled edge. My hands hovered over my own badge-trimpling. At last, I released at the plastic badge clinking softly in the gas, my own name nearly erased. There would be no check mark, no supervisors initial, not today. The linking hard to steady my vision, I turned and walked out, not raising my eyes to the staff, not daring to see who was smiling and who, if any, would follow. I paused in the corridor, watched the paladon creep up over the office windows. The world outside would not settle sun, snow, dusk and possible shadows, all flickering in time with my own hot. My hands, numb and ragged, set the lock on conference roomcy and how to click for the final time. For a moment, the silence felt less threatening. A sense of completion set of the imperfect, but undeniable held together by this last

49:28act of return. My own badge faded from memory, my name blending out of the directory, this scarf and spinning top and shoe now lined up in a world that would catalog me next. I lingued, letting the morning pass and fix the world, remained on the other side of the glass. My presence somewhere inside, waiting to be recalled. The walkie-talkie sputtered to life one last time, a far off voice, no one I knew, kept it through the static, supervisor lemma, could you tidy conference roomcy before you go. The speaker died, and in a blink, the corridor was empty but for a single, neatly folded scarf in the centre of the table, already almost gone from view. The scarf was gone. The hall hummed, faint and recalcitrant, as if nothing had ever been disturbed. My hand hovered with a door handle had been a second before, not quite sure if I had locked it or if the latch had vanished from under my palm. The conference room stretched up behind the glass, empty table, white, faintly with traces of cleaner, sunlight, carbon lattice work shadows. No red top, no mug, no shoes on the table, not even the tangle, dust lines beneath the chairs remained. Everything had receded, as if the end of shift were solvent and I was the last oil slickerance

50:29clean from the surface. I clutched my cart, but its wit surprised me lighter, Baron, as if it had never carried anything at all. The clipboard on the tray bore only a single sheet, lined but blank, neurotoxinced, not even the ghost of a signature. The badge pinched at my line out. For a moment I nearly tore it off, but what would that change? Outside the windows continued their wild recursion, golden sun-worn paint over, sleet on the next, a blur of dusk where the exit doors glimmered, chained and unreachable. A janitor passed me in the corridor, weaving a rut too straight and too practiced for someone I didn't recognise. He nodded. I tried to read his badge, something tangle, starting with S, ending in a coil I couldn't follow. He wheeled his own grey-cart, identical to mine, passed the staff-gitch in his sleeves rolled to the elbow, hands creased with familial labour. Neither of us spoke. For a suspended moment I thought if I looked back, I'd see my own face on his shoulders, or someone else's face hung on mine. On the admin board, a new calendar appeared amongst colliding days rewritten. My own birthday circled, but in jagged, mirror-writing.

51:30In the loss and found tray, only for rappers now, shifting brand stamps that refused to steady-die. A lone brown loafer, polished to ambiguous gloss, rested in the centre of the tray. I never remembered bringing it here. Tham by A.E., the fluorescent balls flicker, halved or doubled, tinting everything sire green then blank. Maria's desk was stacked with small, precise paper-peer remit, a finger-woods gap where her muck had always stood. The phone-out reception bleeded a single ring before it cut off. There was no reason for calls, no one left to call, no messages to relay. Tellin' wandered past no jacket, radio clipped with silent, unreadable fatigue prilling at the coroners of his eyes. He stopped, blanced through the glass-a-conference room-see as if expecting to see something other than bare table and wipe seats. He caught my look, nodded slow as low tide. Surveys all set then, he asked. His voice wasn't quite his own, syllable-stretch, the syntax out of sync. I nodded, hoping it would be enough. Better keep moving, he said absently, I slide in beyond me. Don't want to get stuck between. He disappeared into the corridor's vanishing point, footsteps absorbed by the toothy

52:32cush. I left the admin wing and followed the lock stairwell down a single flight. The door opened onto a mural I did not remember paint-a-trees weeping red leaves into indigo grass. My badge buzzed at every threshold, doors which had led to storage now led to dead ends or walked into a sexting always. Sometimes I walked in a circle and found every exit lock from within as if I had built the lab or it as I moved. In the copy room, new stacks of outdated surveys awaited sorting wrong year at the top, wrong names in the staff column, the supervisor always signed depending. I touched a survey page and felt the numbers on it would go backwards, month eating month. My own name whatever it was failed to find a home in the staff box at the bottom. Outpass payroll, another set of staff as idled in a break room, voices a muddy drone. Some more badges sun-did-na. When this book, words resonated as if under water or pipe from far away. Cakes in the kitchen save a wedge for the next one, someone laughed. After added shifts just about over, you'll want to clean up. But no one moved. I watched for a cue that might break the loop of some stray item requiring my hand, some

53:34human need but the moment passed and claimed. I retreated to my cart, pressed a handle just to feel texture and let myself wander back toward the main entrance. Reflections rippled beside me sometimes only mine, sometimes two or three shadows bending with me, their footsteps mismatched. I tried not to glance at the glass, sometimes my badge in the reflections which load goes, and the name below always blowed past legibility. Back at my locker all the doors yawn to dot angles. Inside mine only a slip of green wool snipped from a scarf by the look and folded to a triangle. I note in block print rested nearby. New supervisor, confirm roll call. End of shift, return items to survey desk. Final task, sign off. I stuffed the wool snippet in my pocket my hand trembling, numb. Out among the cubicles, pictures on the desk had shifted again, all frames mirrored, all faces blurred, some photos now just blocks of colour or featureless silhouettes, barely even shapes. I straightened one frame by habit then realised I didn't recognise the person in the image but that they were almost grinning like me. I checked my watch by instant to habit as old as anything in me.

54:36Its face was blank or whisper of hand circling nothing. The air around the admin hub prickled, wires in the ceiling vibrating with distant laughter are perhaps only static. The scent in the air was not clean at this time but some half-remembered childhood smell, rain on hot pavement, the town of a rubber playground swing. The urge to order things came stronger, mistakeable, undeniable. I followed it, putting mugs upright on their coasters, put in chairs under desks, running my palm over the edge of the conference table until I pulled away a strand of invisible dust. When I tried to recall what rooms I had checked, what tasks remained, everything reversed to corridors folded over themselves, and the narrow internal ledger of my dance pool into nonsense. At last I heard the impossible ringing of a bell and old analogue chime as if summoning a school room from a dream. The PA crackled, supervisor to conference C, final sign off required. I went. Inside the room was unchanged, empty table, ancient clock on the wall spinning smoothly too fast. The only object left was that same clipboard blank except for a single rugged line near the bottom. I set my badge beside it, then the green wall fragment almost in offering.

55:39For a long minute I stood with my hands braced in the glass, watching the reflection of the room spin and distort unable to decide what belonged where any longer. Behind me, the latch clicked. The building or the world or whatever governed this domain nudged its will into my bones with the subtlest force, this is your charge, this is your time, return what is lost, surrender what is kept. I pressed my fingertip to the line and signed, best as I could, a scroll that looked almost like V, lemmer. The clip snapped shut. I left the clipboard on the table and, with the last instinct not yet overwritten, locked the conference room behind me and pocketed the key. No one was waiting not outside, not in the hole, not behind a badge scanner or out in a parking lot, now just shifting sways of light and colour that never resolved into an exit. The brief relief of action faded almost at once into an ease. There should have been applause, or even a thank you from me and calm, but the only reply was the mute, heavy quiet of a building shut out against the iron. Had drifted through the reception area, now half submerged beneath shadows, all points of reference swallowed by a fog of routine carried so far it became weightless. Summerer box fan hummed, carrying a whiff of winter through a vent that should not have

56:42been blowing at all. From the distant lawn, trees planted last spring sank roots in old directions, their branch is moving slightly against a wind I felt deep in the marrow of my hand. I stopped at the loss of found heap and, almost without thinking, smeared the scoff fragment, set its square in the tray, and turned the empty mug beside a so-the-blood logo faced out, as if bracing the shelf for the next unknown. My phone blinked, white light against everything else, one new message, sender unknown. Thank you for your service, next shift commence is please vacate all timelines. I stared as the notification blinked and created itself out. Below it for ready loading was a new thread time stamped in the future, half recognized names peering back from the preview. As I wandered, the cycles of the lights in the corridors became more erratic, amber summarise, velvet dusk flicker of endless afternoon. The building emptied, and refilled in silent, intricate ripples a dozen people passing, then only one, then none at all. The clock of the admin desk snap from one digit to another, landing on no steady iron. I felt myself inning, consciousness wicking out in lawn, steady lines behind me, as if I left not foot principal tracer as a present secos upon echoes, an identity build of habits and

57:44order, now fading into the fabric. One last time, I reached into my pocket for my badge, but withdrew only the sense that I'd held something precious once. My name flickered at the edge of knowing. Behind me, door hinges sag gently shut, and the whole bend away, denying even the clean geometry of the right home. All around, the world entered its next loop. This scarf would appear again, or a red spinning top, someone else would answer by name, and the cycle would begin a new, seamless and quiet. I clasped my hands, pressing knuckles, until pain returned a sense of location. My tasks, whatever remained, had already moved on without me. And so I did too. And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next one.