Ona gave him no explanation. She merely shrugged off his question and waved him away. It didn't matter anyways. She assumed that he would receive the same admonishment. She assumed that as a team, her stress was his stress and vice versa. Perhaps Ona was incapable of seeing the reality of the pressure that she put on herself. Regardless of what it was, she slept well that night. She was exhausted from having stayed up almost the entire night before and then working all day. Her body was feeling the affects of not eating for several days in a row. She was making herself sick. The next morning she woke up feeling particularly dehydrated and weak. At least her body gave her occasional reminders that the penalty for not eating and drinking would be death eventually. She took the time to prepare a small omelet out of a single egg's whites and a handful of spinach. She brewed herself a hot cup of herbal tea as well... tea was good for stress after all. Then in typical Ona fashion, she did what she knew would make her less stressed today... she adorned herself.

Today it was a form fitting black dress that highlighted the thinness of her figure with its decorative lines. She wore gloves that tucked in to the shoulders of the dress, and tall boots that disappeared under the hem of the skirt. Her hair slicked down the sides of her head in perfect cascades coming to a fine point, and a black reflective visor ran across her eyes.



The effect was sharp, hard, and impending. This was her beauty, this was her version of comfortable and stress free. When she felt fully prepared, she left, still clocking in early on her way to her office. Today she would be perfect, and therefore work would be perfect and thus her stress levels would be lowered, pleasing the bosses. She was sure of it.

Whereas yesterday she was a beggar, queen only of the filthy alleys of corporate thought, today she felt power, power true and royal, pulsing in the air which followed her, and puddling in her footprints. The difference was like that between the counterfeit watch and the one with a price tag as long as her womanly hand. She felt the bitterness laying on the tongues of the other office women as they complimented her; jealousy, no doubt, whereas they possessed about themselves the security in their status to build another woman up ingenuously when she could not threaten their fragile hierarchy. The men, simpler creatures, stared from afar, or complimented her, or, if particularly daring, touched her bottom as she passed. (Today only one did that: Nick, from Management, who knew damn well why the women of the office exempted him from harassment charges. That same hand moved up to his face, to mischievously stroke his broad, rugged jaw as he retreated through a nearby doorway.)

When she arrived at the joint office it was empty and quiet, as was the control room to their interview panel. By all measures things had gone back to normal, at least externally. Jules arrived not too late thereafter, although his habit of scraping through the doors just before the eight-O'clock tick irritated more people than one. Today it was 7:56 when he clocked in, and slightly after eight when, clammy and panting from the labors of the staircase and the halls, he threw himself into the wheeled chair. In his ringless hand he gripped the same mocha concoction as yesterday, bitterer than the way most others liked their coffee. So everything had fallen into place after all, restoring itself to normalcy; Ona worked herself to death and Jules got by on his graceful mediocrity. His shirt was a pale lime-green today, and his tie purple.

"Morning," he said, nodding. "Who's first?" Groggy. Dulled. Sleep deprivation sagged under his eyelids, and the blue-white tint of holoscreens haunted the shine in his eyeballs.

She did in fact feel better today, in the sort of way that Ona tended to be better or worse... she was pleased with her personal appearance, and thus pleased with the attention that she received from others. The glances, the whispers, the sneers, and even the grab simply made her feel invincible. Somehow even on days like these the reflection that she saw in the mirror was never quite true to who she was. Her elegance and perfection today made her self-imposed image taller and stronger. She easily ignored the lines of her ribs that shone slightly through the leatherette of her too tight dress, and the hallow that continued to grow in her cheeks. Her eating habits had grown particularly harsh as of late, often leaving her to go several days without eating anything and consuming only the sludge that the office called coffee. The caffeine kept her up, but she was withering away to anyone who cared to truly see. Today, having eaten breakfast she was slightly brighter and more lively. Of course, instead of attributing it to the food, she would merely see it as positivity gained from the continued pursuit of beautification.

Once inside the office, Ona's attention drew away from herself and became immersed in her work. Today, they needed to enter the data from all of the interviews that were conducted yesterday, carefully analyze all of the results, and produce their reports which ultimately gave the individuals ratings on different qualities such as socialization, employ-ability, and longevity. These ratings were then passed on to further reviewers for any individuals who scored high enough to qualify for a second interview. It was a detail oriented, pain-staking process... but it had to be done, and Ona and Jules were the ones who did it. When he burst through the door in the nick of time, his humid, rushed, sickly aura came with him. Ona couldn't help but turn to him with a scowl on her face initially. She hoped that it wouldn't rub off on her and ruin the perfection she'd worked so hard to achieve. "Good morning..." she eyed him momentarily, hoping that her scowl softened as she worked through the truth that was her only friend sitting before her. "You know... green and purple really don't go together. They make you look sick..."

She raised her hand, sliding her middle finger up the side of her cheek bone to her temple momentarily applying pressure before turning her attention away to the stack of folders on her desk. "I've already started. Here... we'll split them. You take this half." She split the pile more in one-third to two third proportions, holding out the smaller stack to him while the larger stack stayed settled in it's place. "We need to get these done and submit so they can start second round call backs."

Thanks. Sure. No problem. A word was not mild, passive, or obsequious, not properly, until Jules's mouth had uttered it, and Ona's words dulled as they struck him, beading off him like butter hitting a hot pan. His gut almost spilled over his belt, but not quite, like a drink held there at the lip of the overfilled glass by water tension alone, and really, isn't that the reason the color of his shirt doesn't matter? It will look lumpy and awkward on him no matter what color it's dyed in, and from what fabric it's cut. So too did his eyes sag, still stricken with the afterglow of his gadget screens. Far from obese, but compared to Ona he was simply a whale, beached and bloated. But because he didn't stop between floors and prowl the offices, speaking to him and her, soaking up their gossip, making plans for lunch, drinks, double dates, and every other thing. Through the art of the beeline alone, the fat man moved more swiftly through the building than his partner could ever dream.

Yet today he looked different. The lethargy which he swallowed with his coffee had come up again somehow. Today he did not shove himself nose-first into his work, fearful first of Ona's wrath and then of their manager's; instead he leafed through his stack when Ona handed it to him. He looked over his shoulder, and opened a drawer or two in his desk, twice each. He leaned out of his cubicle, trying to peek into hers; but he tried not to give himself away in the process, so he traveled too short a distance to spy through the "doorway," and saw nothing.

"Uh, hey," Jules said. "There should be an 'E. Taylor' in your stack. You think you could give him to me, please?" Then, ashamed for having asked, his body pushed in on itself, making him tiny, a small lump of sausage-meat stuffed into a still-smaller casing. His knees pressed together, and as he stared into the knots and burls of the patterned Styroleum desk-surface, he cradled his elbows in his lap.

As abruptly as Ona had assessed the awkwardness of his personal appearance, she likewise switched into work mode and completely ignored all that was just as usual for Jules in order to ensure that the quality of her work was absolute perfection. Unlike his lazy, haphazard page turning, Ona was engaged in the tedious task of searching each shred of flatted tree pulp and lasered ink for pertinent information that would result in adjustments of her ratings of the interviewee's behavior. The slightest twitch of an eye noted, the most minor of pause could indicate an issue of concern. Once in this mode, the world around Ona tended to be completely blacked out. She lost all awareness of her body's needs, of natural social ques or attempts at banter and communication from others, of the discomfort of her own excessive outfitting. There was nothing else that was important in the entire universe except the file that she was working on at that moment.

When Jules interrupted her, it took a second for her to snap out of it and look up. She'd all but forgotten about the hideous shirt and tie combo that was now staring down upon her. Gazing at it again somehow made her question her own appearance and on of her hands moved to run down her waist as though smoothing out the material, ultimately reassuring her that she was still perfect, still beautiful. "E. Taylor?... Uhh... I guess. Why? Is something wrong?" She furrowed her brow, unable to recall immediately the face that belonged to the file he was requesting. Perhaps this was someone that he interviewed when she was gone. If that was the case though, wouldn't a fresh set of eyes be good for the review?

Jules' posture, and his slow, deliberated movements, demonstrated wordlessly that he was unsure himself. His predominant fear lied in invading Ona's space to seize the paper; he was slow to enter, but once he had breached that invisible border, quick to snatch the file away and then retreat back to his side of the desk.

But even when he had returned to base with his spoils, the paper—itself a razor crafted from wood pulp—seemed ready to slice him up, with how he hesitated to scan its contents. Of course Jules knew the truth: that he did not want to see, staring back at him from that slice of paper, exactly what he knew he would.

The man's records were perfect. Spotless. Immaculate, a word they only ever use for Jesus and maybe a saint or two. Taylor had never worked for any of the Big Three before, so the patchers had no reason to suspect old company loyalties of getting dredged up a year or a decade from then. His former experience in the field was intensive, relevant, yet realistic. Even his smile, pinned and bleached and all the rest, reeked of corporate sterility, shining neon-white with all the philosophies which Transcomm wanted in a worker: conformity, congeniality, and a hopeless addiction to money and silk ties. Frankly Jules hated that sort of man anyway, and if there was no cost to it, no chance of getting fired for negligence of work duties, he would have ruined this guy's chances out of spite. But in the interview...when Jules and this Mr. Taylor were in the same room together...

"Not really," he said. Ona wouldn't believe him. Of course she wouldn't. Even if Taylor's handsome sun-weathered mug didn't seduce her from the moment she gazed at its mugshot, she would look at the file itself then, the details of his work experience and his attitude and his schedule, and she'd know that he deserved to move along to the next stage. Jules couldn't justify himself to her precisely because she had been called up to the handler's office; because she hadn't met E. Taylor in person.

He needed to stamp it and be done; soil the paper with that fateful red ink-mark, so it would never go any further in this company than the dumpster, and the landfill beyond, no matter how badly Ona wanted to save him. Like a check across which he needed above all other things to scrawl the word "VOID," so the tellers couldn't accept it no matter what anyone said. But he began to doubt himself. If he was wrong about Taylor then he'd be risking another citation. And by his count he had too many of those; one, maybe two left and he'd be answering to the handler himself, just like Ona before him. He didn't know of any patcher whose position at the company had survived such a thing. They had no time to spare for patchers who couldn't patch; who repaired pieces of the net which were already whole, and let the fish slip through the real tears.

Damn it.