*5*
"Join us at lunch today?" MaryAnn asked.
"Hmm?" Bob raised his head.
"Going away lunch for Brandy," MaryAnn affirmed.
"Oh!" Bob, always the last to know any of the office gossip, felt a twinge of remorse. "Yeah, sure," Bob said with a mixture of heartache and angst.
"Around noon," MaryAnn said, as she walked away.

Bob glanced over at Brandy; she didn't return his eyebeam touch. Bob felt a prickle of sorrow. How come all the women in that particular seat left after he succeeded in falling in love with them? Bob smirked at himself. It's my own self-defeating attitude, naturally. Valuing the freedom and possession of his soul over the love and affection of a woman. He'd been here before. He smirked at himself again, then caught himself in self-pity and pursed his lips. Don't want to arouse too much suspicion that I might be becoming too self aware now.

Noon rolled around eventually. Mark came by "are you going with us?"
"Yeah, sure," Bob replied. "Who's driving?"
"Tim brought his van, we'll all fit in there."
"Cool," Bob replied.

Bob knew by the tone of Rick's voice that he carried this well-rehearsed line over from his Sheriff's work. Rick would say just exactly what he wanted to say, scarcely a word more; he was absolutely practiced in the art of maintaining the thin blue line. Bob could see that in high security installations - government work, spook rings - this phrase could have a grain of real meaning to it. It was a sly, threatening way to deny information. I could tell you that, but then I'd have to kill you. Choose. Life or knowledge.

"I slept with two girls last night ..." Rick smirked, relishing that he had first denied exposing his story, and then had turned around and chopped them with an uppercut.
"Bullshit," Brad replied, half believing, but half trying to call Rick's bluff to sidetrack an impending enviousness.
"Yeah, no shit," Rick continued, puffing out his chest. "I met this girl at Conner's, and she started talking about her roommate, and so, then when we went back to her place, we really just hit it off."
"You're an animal," Brad said.

Bob rolled his eyes. He had heard Rick brag of his conquests before. It always left him with a jumble of emotions. Yeah, sure, he wished he could get laid as often as Rick. But the one-night stand routine also showed some other deeper, darker side of Rick: that he couldn't stay in a relationship. He suffered from a curious mix of bravado and superficiality.

Bob's thoughts drifted back to Rick's earlier comment. It still rattled at the back of his brain, mixed with Rick's false bravado and his requirements to project his life as something other than its defeated sadness. Rick, torn between the truth and the carnival of appearances we call society, living his lie to deceive himself. The wisdom and irony of his thoughts began to surface. The TRUTH, the honest to God truth truth, was incompatible with living. To see oneself as the temporary arrangement of molecules within a gigantic tumultuous universe; the human species as a blip of time on the eons of star formation, galaxies collapsing, elements born in the explosion of supernova and sucked back into the gravitational singularity of a black hole, everything else in between just a passage.

The Earth, all its trappings, and all of its history of no greater significance than the tick of the second hand on the office wall clock. Bob had been here before. The knowledge of this truth, he knew, would be a threat to his survival. Bob got up from his desk for a break. Time for some fresh air.

He walked over to the elevator, smiling at the waves of energy and love that came to him as he headed past the mass of employees. Souls in the universe. Millions of souls, billions of souls, love flowing. The elevator was there when he pushed the button: the doors opened. Outside, the crisp and clean air had a bit of a sea-salt tinge. The jacaranda trees were flowering, small purple flowers. Bob's head emptied immediately. He walked over to the other building across the square, driven by emptiness and curiosity.

He was just "going with the flow". Bob noticed the overhead metal lattice structure, not functional, just some modern attempt at decorating the entrance. The signage inside the front entry listed numerous companies he had never heard of before. Down a carpeted hallway, Cloverleaf Software. Inside the vertical slice of windows he saw computers, half empty cubicles, half filled with pin-up Star Trek posters and Dilbert cartoons, pictures of families, fractures of company ideas and policies.

He kept moving. As long as you're walking, people feel like you must be okay, because you are going somewhere. He must be on his way to something, it's okay. Bob had cultivated the purposeful walk as part of MBWA: Management By Walking Around. It also served in neighborhoods where he would otherwise be conspicuously out of place, just standing around. But walking, he could pretty much get away with an observational pace of soaking up the ethos - people would glance at him and leave him alone, oh, he's okay, he's on his way somewhere.

He came to a glass doorway and stepped outside to a small path. Between the buildings, a courtyard opened to the sky above, with glass offices on both sides. The thick plate glass separating the offices from the courtyard made it strangely peaceful here -- you could watch the bustle and sense the phones ringing on the other side, but it was like watching TV with the mute button pressed. Here, detached, this small divine space, was off limits by convention. Independent from everyone, yet respected and cared for by the grounds superintendent. A small man-made stream trickled through a narrow channel in the slate stone paving. In the hustle and bustle of the workplace, the garden hideaway provided a tiny quiet oasis.

Some ferns were planted on a dirt mound in the corner. Well, bless the people who created this. Bob had one of those realizations: he had been summoned just for the sole purpose of arriving here, here now, here in this location. One of those funny events that happens, where you aren't enlightened until it's passed. It was like being amongst the throngs at a baseball game, sitting there patiently waiting, the home team behind three to two. Seventh inning, now the eighth, ninth inning. Then, in the bottom of the ninth... boom! Two run homer. Game over, we win. So that's why we've been waiting here all this time. It makes sense now.