This means it is:
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not canon
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not chronological
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not reliable
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and not anyone’s best version of events
It exists entirely outside the timeline and should not be used to explain, justify, or predict anything that actually matters.
Some details are exaggerated.Some are invented.Some are technically impossible.
Any bunnies depicted here are innocent.Any humans depicted here should have known better.Any conclusions drawn are the reader’s responsibility.
Howard did not write this.Howard did not approve this.Howard is aware this exists and has chosen not to intervene.
Proceed accordingly.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The phone call lasted fourteen seconds.
This was, by any reasonable metric, insufficient time to do anything meaningful.
It was, unfortunately, more than enough.
Howard answered it while standing next to the copy machine, which had been “initializing” since Tuesday and showed no signs of remembering what it had been initialized for.
“Yes,” Howard said into the phone.
Jake, walking past with a stack of folders, slowed.
“No,” Howard continued.
Jake stopped walking.
“That won’t be necessary.”
Howard listened for a moment, nodded once, and hung up.
Fourteen seconds.
Howard placed the phone back in its cradle, retrieved his copies, adjusted the stack so the edges were flush, and walked away.
Nothing exploded.No alarms sounded.No helicopters appeared.
This was immediately deemed unacceptable.
Jake waited three full seconds before turning to Trent.
Trent was already turning to Jake.
They locked eyes with the mutual recognition of two people who had just witnessed something that would not be explained later.
Jake lowered his voice. “Okay.”
Trent nodded. “Okay.”
They both stared at the phone.
It sat there, beige and ordinary, radiating the kind of confidence only an object with no accountability could manage.
Jake gestured at it. “Did you hear what I heard?”
Trent said, “I heard nothing, which is the problem.”
Jake frowned. “He said yes first.”
Trent nodded. “Acknowledgment.”
“Then no.”
“Boundary.”
“And then,” Jake said carefully, “ ‘That won’t be necessary.’ ”
Trent inhaled. “Cancellation.”
Jake leaned closer to the phone, as if proximity might cause it to confess. “You don’t cancel things unless they already exist.”
“Or were about to,” Trent added.
They stared at the phone again.
The phone did nothing.
This was suspicious.
Trent frowned suddenly. “Hold on.”
Jake blinked. “What?”
“I can just check the call log.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Jake froze. “You can?”
“I’m the phone guy,” Trent said. “Yes.”
He pulled out his phone and began tapping with the resigned confidence of a man who had solved many problems and regretted most of them.
Jake leaned over his shoulder.
Trent scrolled once.
Stopped.
Scrolled again.
Stopped harder.
Jake whispered, “You’re making a face.”
Trent said nothing.
Jake waited one second. “Say it.”
Trent exhaled. “It’s boring.”
Jake recoiled slightly, as if struck by the concept. “No.”
“Normal number. Normal routing. No masking. No strange hops. No weird carrier handoffs,” Trent said. “It looks like… nothing.”
Jake stared at him. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Trent nodded. “Exactly.”
Jake paced once. “So that means it’s a front.”
“For what?” Trent asked.
Jake gestured broadly at the phone, the building, the county seal on the wall. “For anything. You don’t hide behind boring unless you’re hiding something.”
Trent nodded slowly. “Boring is camouflage.”
Jake snapped his fingers. “Yes.”
They stared at the phone again, now with professional disappointment.
Trent said, “If it were trying to look powerful, it would be loud.”
Jake nodded. “Press releases. Logos. Executive titles that don’t fit on badges.”
“Strong language,” Trent added. “Buzzwords.”
“That’s theater,” Jake said.
Trent looked at him. “Yeah.”
Jake tapped the table. “Real power doesn’t convince you. It removes options.”
Trent went still.
“That call,” Jake said quietly, “removed options.”
Trent nodded. “Quietly.”
Jake leaned back. “Which means it didn’t need witnesses.”
They sat with that for a moment.
Then Jake stood abruptly. “Okay. New phase.”
Trent blinked. “Phase?”
Jake grabbed a marker. “We diagram.”
They did not need a whiteboard.They used one anyway.
Jake wrote PHONE CALL in the center and circled it three times for emphasis.
Trent added arrows. “Inbound. Short duration. Declarative statements only.”
Jake nodded. “No negotiation language.”
“No uncertainty markers,” Trent said.
“No emotional variance,” Jake added.
They stared at the diagram.
Jake frowned. “What if it wasn’t a request?”
Trent tilted his head. “Explain.”
Jake said, “What if the other side was informing him of something?”
Trent’s eyes widened. “And he said no.”
Jake nodded. “Which means refusal wasn’t an option for them.”
Trent swallowed. “Which means the power asymmetry is backwards.”
Jake underlined ASYMMETRY twice.
Trent said, “What if it wasn’t about stopping something.”
Jake said, “What if it was about allowing something to proceed.”
They both froze.
Jake whispered, “That’s worse.”
He stopped himself.
Jake corrected, “That’s… more complicated.”
Trent nodded. “I don’t like complicated.”
Jake paced. “Okay. Alternative theory.”
Trent perked up. “Good.”
Jake said, “What if it wasn’t important at all.”
Trent stared. “You don’t believe that.”
“I don’t,” Jake admitted. “But we should consider it.”
Trent crossed his arms. “Fine. What does ‘not important’ look like?”
Jake gestured vaguely. “A delivery. A schedule. A meeting.”
Trent shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t cancel meetings like that,” Trent said. “You reschedule.”
Jake nodded. “Fair.”
Trent leaned forward. “Medical?”
Jake froze. “No.”
“ ‘That won’t be necessary’ could be surgery,” Trent said.
Jake shook his head. “Nope.”
“Extraction,” Trent offered.
Jake waved his hands. “Stop.”
They both sat down again.
Jake rubbed his temples. “Okay. Reset.”
Trent nodded. “Reset.”
Jake looked at the phone. “What if it was about us.”
Trent blinked. “Us?”
Jake gestured at the building, the yard, the bunnies, the laminated signs. “What if someone wanted to intervene.”
Trent’s mouth went dry. “And he said no.”
Jake nodded. “And then said it wouldn’t be necessary.”
Trent whispered, “Because he’s handling it.”
They sat in silence.
The phone did nothing.
The copy machine beeped.
Jake jumped. “That’s it.”
Trent blinked. “What?”
“I figured it out,” Jake said.
Trent leaned forward. “Okay.”
Jake said, with complete confidence, “It was a test.”
Trent nodded immediately. “Of course it was.”
“They wanted to see what he’d do,” Jake continued. “Escalate. Ask questions. Panic.”
“And he didn’t,” Trent said.
“He set limits,” Jake said.
Trent smiled thinly. “That’s how you pass.”
Jake nodded. “That’s how you survive.”
They leaned back, satisfied.
At that exact moment, Howard walked back into the room carrying a box of printer toner.
Jake and Trent froze.
Howard looked at them, then at the whiteboard, then at the phone.
“Is something wrong?” Howard asked.
Jake opened his mouth.
Trent kicked him under the table.
Jake closed his mouth.
“No,” Trent said quickly. “Everything’s fine.”
Howard nodded. “Good.”
He set the toner down, glanced at the phone, and frowned slightly.
“Oh,” he added. “If it rings again, let it go to voicemail.”
Jake’s heart skipped.
Trent briefly experienced what he would later describe as a temporary absence of soul.
Howard picked up the box and walked out.
The door closed.
Jake whispered, “Voicemail.”
Trent nodded. “Evidence.”
Jake stared at the phone. “I’m not sleeping tonight.”
Trent leaned back. “That’s probably for the best.”
The phone did not ring again.
Which, of course, only confirmed everything.
(The factual sequence, for the record:)
- The phone call was from a vendor confirming a toner delivery.
- No meetings were canceled.
- No secret operations were initiated or prevented.
- The copy machine remains uninitialized.
- Jake and Trent are not authorized to maintain whiteboards without supervision.—Howard