Popping out of my reverie, I looked around the office. I was no lipreader, so no matter how much I squinted at the memory I wasn’t going to be figuring out what I had said to me. Maybe I’ll remember it in the future.

  I made to leave the office, walking around my desk and past the threshold. Out of amusement I looked at my name tag, the one that had been blurry in the dream. I managed to startle myself when it was missing, a somewhat whiter section of the wall behind where it would normally sit. I walked over to the rectangular mark on the wall, and heard a metallic clang.

  it had only fallen on the floor. I was just being silly. Or some Celestial somewhere was bored and needed someone to live stream for entertainment. I reached down to pick it up. Grasping it, I straightened out and stared at the words etched into the plate.

  [Charlotte Willoughby]

  They were still there, and not blurry at all. Me, still worried about that? Of course not! It almost overrode my usual annoyance at the fact they used my full name for the plate, which no one ever called me. I was “Charley” to the few people I trusted enough to open up to. My grandma used to call me “Char”, said it reminded her of warm evenings by the fireplace.

  I stared at it for a few more moments. I went to reaffix it to the wall, and as I did, the metal seemed to darken a little, a slight shimmer running across the surface. I blinked and when my eyes reopened it looked totally normal. Was I seeing things? I pushed it back into place with gusto, hoping the blu-tack would hold it better this time. Probably not. Stuff was older than me, if the wrapper was anything to go off of.

  Kneading my palm as I walked towards the stairs, I swore a little under my breath. It felt warm. I somehow managed to forget that I had a minor allergic reaction to whatever metal they made that thing out of. Every damn time. The skin would turn red and eventually the top layer would peel like a sunburn.

  Honestly, it didn’t hurt that much but it was annoying as hell and they said that reactions like that could get worse in an instant. I definitely didn’t want that, I couldn’t even begin to tell you where you could find some healthcare in this pit. Theoretically, my erstwhile employment had some coverage attached to it, but I couldn’t figure out how to actually make use of it. Somewhere some CEO was probably patting himself on the back for that one as he pulled the ventilator plug of a mother with three young kids just to feel something in his life.

  I walked down the stairs ranting to myself at a fair clip for about two flights before I remembered that I was going to need my rift kit. So I got in some extra calisthenics with a second side of rants. I’d get more in later returning the kit before checking out. Calisthenics, that is. Well, probably rants too. They’d left the shift registration machine at the top of the stairs in the office, couldn’t count the time traversing as on the company dime, now could we? Some people didn’t even work in that office. They only had to go there for that damn clock-in.

  I had plenty more time to fume more about the current state of affairs as I descended. No one knew who really ran the city. They might have been elected into the position at some point but it wasn’t when I was alive. It somehow managed to partially function. The plumbing worked, although the liquid coming out of it was fairly suspect. Pretty much everyone boiled or filtered the water. I boiled, since I’d seen people suffer when the factory decided to spontaneously cut corners on the “survival straws”. The name was painfully accurate.

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  They helped you but you might not using it if you drew the short one.

  Still shaking out the heat in my hand when I hit the lobby floor, I saw two people walking towards the door wearing outfits that matched mine. They weren’t on my recovery team, but I knew Boss Kick-a-Desk ran more than just ours.

  The lobby was pretty spartan. It had the usual expanses of glass and painful looking benches you’d expect. The overhead lighting was irregular, since no one bothered to replace it. It wasn’t super consistent either, fluctuating with the unreliable grid power, a benefit you could enjoy anywhere in the city. Well, anywhere with actual power, that is. There were plants - dead, of course - on either side of a desk with a top and front that looked expensive but probably were just a thin imitation of the actual thing.

  If it had any value, someone would have stolen it by now.

  A truck pulled up, I recognized the driver. We waved at each other and I jumped into the open back, pulling back the canvas layer as I entered. I was the first. I thought, jumping into the single center chair. It was a veritable throne compared to the benches adhered to the floor on either side with rusty bolts.

  No armrests, but it was actually curved in a fashion that pretended to be ergonomic. That wasn’t why I liked it.

  The rest of the recovery team filed in, and I felt the truck roll as the Boss’s weight compressed the old springs on the passenger side as he grabbed the oh-shit handle and flung himself inside. With a bound, the truck recovered and one of the new guys slammed his head on the metal side.

  That’s why I liked it.

  There was a clank as the driver shifted gears, but no engine noise or fumes. The Boss’s energy powered us forward, converted into rotational force by some crazy rift shit I knew nothing about. Not that the boss did much either. Although he liked to brag about it, he was only at the lowest level of power. Maybe at the top end of it, but the lowest level nonetheless. Still enough to move the work truck somehow. They called people like that a “Mote”, or something similar; I honestly didn’t care enough to pay attention.

  The word brought me back to my dream and the pretty lights that had led me around. They seemed to have so much more than the Boss. Not that I could quantify what “depth” meant here. Just , man.

  My stomach rumbled along with the truck. I’d eat before leaving home, and usually not until getting back home after work. They weren’t kind enough to allot us time for lunches. I was pretty spoiled by even having my own office.

  Hard won, that was. I had a sort of knack for sorting useful stuff from the dross we’d often pull out of the rift. Everything was this mishmash of crazy artifacts that didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason. If it hadn’t been yanked from a jagged glowing hole in reality by someone who could bench me one-armed all day without breaking a sweat, I’d have doubts about whether it had any value at all.

  While it looked like trash to most people, when I sorted through it, whatever caught my eye apparently had more value than the rest. No idea what exactly it was, but certain bits and pieces just spoke to me, almost like they had a gravitational pull. Guess you could say it “felt deep” too. The other day I’d found a stick with a green leaf on it that looked like any other one, but when I handed it over after feeling the tug, the appraiser at the branch got really excited-looking. I even got a small bonus.

  Honestly it was probably part of the reason I was let off so easy earlier. And the reason no one argued when I got the center seat. Probably. Could be they all got their heads whacked enough to knock all the common sense out of their ears.

  The driver popped on the brakes. The new kid, who was still holding his head, almost tumbled sideways off his seat. I propped a hand on his shoulder before he could completely invert. He gave me a thankful look.

  I waited for the rest of the recovery team to file out, and then stepped down myself.

  - and fuzzy, so probably bumble bees. That said, I am a mysterious celestial phenomenon-exploring entity of my word, so here is a chapter for you!

  Charley needs a family backstory. No lone sad orphan stuff, give the poor thing at least family... she'll need it with you holding the wheel of this narrative.