tomorrow

For a moment Kyle stood very still and felt a sense of calm that he had rarely if ever felt. His mind felt clear and serene and the wires and lights which a moment ago had seemed confusing and threatening now seemed to make sense and be exactly where they should be. Kyle closed his eyes and unconsciously brought his hands together in the "ohm" position and felt at one with the universe.

Unbeknownst to Kyle, Bjorn's eyes widened and a grin played across his face.

Then the hum of the room began to intrude on Kyle's consciousness, and he slowly opened his eyes again and looked around, feeling mildly anxious. The more he looked, the more anxious he felt. His knee began to twitch ever so slightly. He'd fixed the cloud, that was good, but now what was he doing? In PIA? He was supposed to be in Diagnostics. He should go. With a more pronounced twitch in his right leg, he turned to Bjorn and said nervously, "I should go."

"Fascinating!" Bjorn exclaimed, with gusto.

"Erm. Ok. Thanks so much for your help. I'll make sure to give you proper credit with the Director."


Bjorn wasn't listening. he was staring down at the water gun as if it had recently been a banana and he wasn't sure what to do with it now. He turned it over slowly in his hands, and hten started tapping madly at the consel.

"Um, so I'll just see myself out, then . . "

"WAIT! You have to come back!" Bjorn was actually animated. "Tomorrow. For lunch. My treat."

"Here?" Kyle looked skeptical.

"Yes! I mean, we can meet here and I can give you the proper tour, and then we can go down to the cafeteria, get some food, see how you interact with other people. Maybe the Director will be there - oh that would be great . ." Bjorn had trailed off towards the end and turned back towards his consel.

"What?" Kyle was getting alarmed again.

"What? Oh, nothing. Meet me here at noon. We'll have a look around, then grab some lunch." Bjorn said more coherently.

Kyle still looked poised to run away and never look back, so Bjorn adopted a bit of his previous nonchalance. "It'll be a good networking opportunity for you. I'm the director of PIA, and I know everyone in this place."

This was a language Kyle could understand, and he brightened a little. "Oh, Ok then. Tomorrow at noon. See you then."

"See ya." but Bjorn was already engrossed with what he was typing and didn't notice as Kyle slipped out. Kyle rubbed his eyes. What a day. He vaguely remembered frantically throwing papers around his office at some point, and decided he should go tidy it up before heading home.

Bjorn had returned to the monitors further back in the room. "Can I ask you a question?" asked Kyle, redundantly. Bjorn raised his eyebrows amiably in Kyle's direction. Kyle pressed onward, "How do you move around in here without dying tragically of electrocution or self-strangulation or something?"

Bjorn grinned. "PIA's my little girl -- she'd never do anything to hurt me, would you sweetheart?" He punctuated the last with an affectionate whack of a nearby pipe. Distant ends of the pipe spit steam and sparks, respectively. It ocurred to Kyle that this combination coming from the same pipe suggested some kind of danger, but he hadn't yet wrapped his mind around the problem when Bjorn came back with "Hey, you want to see something cool?"

"Cooler than blowing up a cloud?" he asked, dubiously.

"Eye of the beholder and all that, but yeah, way cooler than blowing up a cloud."

"Okay."

"Stand over by the Calibration console for a sec." Kyle frowned. Bjorn squinted at him for a moment. "Right...stand over by the large blue sign for a sec. Kyle brightened and walked over to the large blue sign. With nothing else immediate to occupy his attention, he stared thoughtfully at the large blue sign. It said "Calibration". Oh.

"Okay, now what?"

Bjorn grinned back at him placidly. Kyle fidgeted. Kyle did not like silences. Some people made a distinction between uncomfortable silences and comfortable silences. Kyle mostly made a distinction between muttering to himself and muttering to other people. Kyle started to hum tunelessly.

Bjorn held up a finger and said "Probably best if you don't make much noise..."

This concerned Kyle, who said "What's probably better?"

Bjorn didn't say anything in response, instead opting for the universal finger-to-lips gesture that suggested silence. Kyle frowned uncertainly and returned to fidgeting, but stopped humming. Better safe than sorry. ...Right?

Bjorn nodded his head quietly to music not audible to Kyle, and then said after a pause "Okay, that should about do it".

Kyle blinked back at him. "Do what?"

"So, I build PIA to destabilize distant structures that started off with relatively high entropy to begin with. It occurred to me earlier this year that similar principles should allow hyper-stabilization of nearby structures. PIA's got your measurements now, or near enough." He leaned over and typed something into the terminal to his right, and watched the monitor for a moment. Then he turned to the table on which he'd been sitting, and lifted what looked like a very badly perforated super-soaker, pointed it at Kyle, and shot him.

Kyle screamed. Kyle clutched at his chest and gasped for air. Kyle fell to his knees and writhed.

Bjorn pursed his lips.

Kyle hyperventilated and patted himself all over. Kyle frowned. Kyle was fine.

“But what about the cloud”

“Its gone, you blew it up, the relative humidity sensors noticed a .0001% increase in moisture and are making the adjustment.”

Kyle shook his head in a futile attempt to gain clarity. “So I’ve been running around here like a madman for the last twenty minutes, and all I really needed to do was come up her and press a button?”

“It wasn’t that simple, what do you think I was doing with that wrench, peeling bananas?” Kyle first met Bjorn this morning but was pretty sure Bjorn was merely feigning emotional injury. So he laughed and was heartened to see that was the right decision.

“Well, what about damage control? What if someone saw the cloud?” Kyle tried to keep his tone as nonchalant and conversational as he could. His blood pressure had come back down to normal, but he was still not completely at ease.

“Nah, not very likely, the cloud was still out over the ocean, it wouldn’t have cast a shadow until the afternoon.”

“But couldn’t someone, you know, just looked up and seen it?”

“How often did you look up at the sky before you came here?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has everything to do with everything.” If Bjorn were getting fed up with Kyle’s neurosis, he was doing a good job of hiding it. He was sounding downright chummy actually. “You see, people just don’t think about the weather, they don’t worry about it, they take it for granted and they just don’t look up at the sky. A hundred thousand years of programming erased with three generations of perfect weather.”

Kyle had his doubts about that theory, but he was more interested in the last thing Bjorn said. “Who are we to say what perfect weather is?”

“That’s not my department. I’d have thought you’d know more about that than I do.” Bjorn replied matter-of-factly.

“Well, they do teach us a little bit about the history of it all. Did you know that originally the April showers were originally programmed as a 66.6% chance of rain in April, but they had to change it to a set two days on one day off after they had ten straight days of rain and suicides went up by a factor of 100.”

“No shit? Wonder what the odds of that happening were”

“Once in every 21.2 years” He got a weird look from Bjorn and got defensive. “What, I’m good at numbers, there had to be some reason for me to be here right?”

Kyle's the Man

“Yeah sure,” said Kyle. “I knew that.”

“So,” said Bjorn.

“So,” said Kyle.

“Do you want to do the honors, or should I?”

“Um,” said Kyle.

“You know what? I think you should do it. You’ve earned it.”

“Have I?” said Kyle. “I mean, I have. I’ve earned something.”

“Follow me,” said Bjorn. Kyle followed. Bjorn clearly had logged some quality observatory time in the past. He navigated the various moving spheres, blocks, control stations, and panels with blistered and exposed wiring easily, as though he were merely strolling through his own bio-hazardous bedroom. Kyle’s bedroom boasted nothing so exciting as biohazards or exposed wiring. He recognized that he was perhaps a little under-prepared for such an adventure. As Bjorn skipped blithely ahead, Kyle placed one foot in front of the other, and tried to keep all appendages as close to his body as possible.

He reconvened with Bjorn in the middle of the observatory. Bjorn stood before a large, cylindrical tube that stretched floor to ceiling, sort of like a hokey movie periscope. Like said hokey movie periscope, he had his eye firmly pressed to an eye-piece that extended from the tube. He looked up as Kyle shimmied between two the remaining, free standing electronic devices that separated himself from Bjorn. One hummed melodiously. The other glowed like a giant space heater. Kyle thought he smelled something burning as he squeezed past. Maybe it was his hair.

“There you are,” said Bjorn. “Thought you might have fallen into the sump.”

“Not this time,” said Kyle.

“Take a look,” said Bjorn. He moved aside. Kyle peered into the eyepiece. At first he didn’t know what he was looking at. The resolution was grainy, and the lighting poor. He squinted.

“It’s a cloud?” said Kyle.

“It’s the cloud,” said Bjorn.

“Right,” said Kyle. “Like I said.”

“Let’s get rid of the fucker,” said Bjorn.

“Great,” said Kyle. “Sounds like a plan.”

“How do you want to do it?” said Bjorn.

“Um,” said Kyle.

“Would you like to hear your options?”

“You bet,” said Kyle.

“We can blow the cloud away, or we can blow the cloud up. Which do you prefer?”

“If we blow it away, where does it go?” said Kyle.

“Arizona,” said Bjorn. “Or Colorado. Depending on the wind conditions.”

“I have an aunt in Colorado,” said Kyle. “I’d hate to ruin her day. Let’s blow it up.”

“A man after my own heart,” said Bjorn. He began to punch a code into a nearby, partially completed display panel. Only half the keyboard was present, as were two buttons, a red one and a green one. The green button wasn’t lit. Kyle guessed that, like the missing second half of the keyboard, the green button wasn’t working yet. “Alrighty,” said Bjorn. “Here’s your big moment. You ready?”

“I’m ready,” said Kyle.

“I mean, are you really ready? Don’t wuss out on me now, Kyle!”

“I’m really ready!” said Kyle.

“Are you the man, Kyle?”

“I’m the man!”

“That’s what I want to hear!” said Bjorn. “Push the goddamn button!” He pointed dramatically to the red button, which was, even as he spoke, flashing attractively.

“I can! I will! I’m the man!” said Kyle, and he pushed the red button.

Nothing happened. “Well,” said Kyle, “that was sort of anticlimactic.”

“Look through the eyeglass,” said Bjorn. He sighed.

Kyle looked through the eyeglass. There was the cloud, white, fluffy and grainy, against a backdrop that could, possibly, be a blue sky, if you looked at it the right way. At first nothing happened. He heard the machine hum behind him grow. Nearby, the singing electronic device waxed operatic. Something rumbled deep within the observatory. The room shuddered. Everything fell silent.

It happened so quickly he almost missed it. A flash of red light burst across his screen, directly into the cloud. The cloud internalized the laser for a second, ruffling its fluffy feathers like a distressed chicken. Then it burst. One minute it was there. The next minute it was gone. Kyle had completely vaporized the cloud.

Kyle stared at the empty space for a long moment. Nothing there but space, space that might or might not be blue, depending on how you looked at it. “Well,” he said.

“That’s enough of that,” said Bjorn. “Time for lunch.”

"Wrench."

Kyle's hunger quickly became the mother of invention, and he tucked the wrench under his left elbow, holding hte banana in his left hand, and unpeeling it with his right. Then he tranferred the banana to his right and munched on it with something he was surprised to recognize as contentment. He turned his attention to Bjorn, who was typing rapidly at one of the many displays, and now crawled underneath it to disconnect and reconnect some wires.

Kyle felt the familiar twinge of alarm and panic. "What!? Um, are you supposed to .."

"Wrench." Bjorn stated, holding out his right had as though Kyle had not spoken.

"Oh, er . ." Kyle awkardly transferred the banana back to his left hand and the wrench to his right and handed it to Bjorn. Bjorn promptly wrenched the bolts off a panel under the display, revealing more wires which he also began disconnecting and reconnecting.

"What?!" Kyle began again, but then thought better of it and filled his mouth with banana instead, again munching contentedly. He sighed. Bjorn was on it. No need for an aneurysm. He looked around for someplace to sit down.

"Wrench."

Kyle jumped. Bjorn's hand was reaching out expectantly. Kyle looked wildly around. Hadn't he given Bjorn the wrench? Where was it now? He was supposed to keep track of it. That was the only really concrete thing he had been asked to do all day, andn he had failed. Failed! He was such a fuck-up. Not knowing how to fix the cloud, that was sort of an understandable fuck-up, he wasn't realy qualified to do that. But keeping track of a wrench he should be able to handle. Why had they ever given him this job in the first place? It had all been a terrible mistake!

Bjorn had somehow gotten up from under the display and was grinning broadly as Kyle came apart at the seams. He now slapped him on the back companionably and said genially "i'm just fucking with you. I've got the wrench right here."

Halfway across the air bridge Kyle skidded to a halt in front of the Director, who was walking the other direction carrying a sack lunch. The Director raised an eyebrow in his direction, and when that provoked no immediate response from the faintly panic-stricken Kyle, he added "What are you doing? I thought you were addressing our recent development..."

"Yes, sir, absolutely!"

"Well?"

Kyle blinked at him rapidly and then stammered, "ah...Post...ah...PIA has been...er...has been notified, sir."

"And...?"

"And?" asked Kyle with the panic creeping more fully into the pitch of his voice, but on seeing the stony set of the Director's visage he hastened to expand on this point. "And! And, why, sir, they're ON it. I was just going now to check in on their progress and begin follow-up operations, in fact!"

The Director squinted at him uncertainly. "Kyle, I have to go eat my goddamned lunch."

"Oh, yes sir!" Kyle enthused vaguely.

The Director said nothing for a moment, then smoothly removed his attention from Kyle and strode purposefully past him without a further comment.

Kyle sagged against the wall with a strained expression, then righted himself and resumed his pace. As he jogged uncertainly down the corridors, two things dawned on him. One, the aroma of the Director's lunch had reminded his body that he had not yet broken his fast, and was running all over creation on a quite empty stomach, and two, he had absolutely no idea what he was going to do when he reached his destination. Mixed with the general distress of the day thus far, the consequent uncertainty and hunger were nearly disabling.

It was therefore with a combination of agitated impatience and wild-eyed confusion that Kyle burst through the blue door marked "OBSERVATORY" into an overwhelming chasm of whirling machinery. There were beams and balls and blocks whirling in every direction, displays providing the only real light, but sufficiently plentiful to illuminate the chaos brightly. Air and metal and lubricant rasped against one another everywhere in the giant room, leaving a steady background of industrial percussion, and a steady foreground of bitingly metallic smells.

Kyle stood blinking dumbly in the doorway for a few moments and was startled back to alertness by the banana and spanner being thrust at him. "Hold these." said Björn, "You can eat the banana, but don't eat the wrench -- we'll need that shortly."

Kyle stared down at his newly occupied hands uncertainly and considered the task of peeling a banana one-handed.

The walk to the third floor was much more orderly than his recent travels through the complex. Kyle was not foolish enough to think he was off the hook, but he found comfort in the fact he now knew he was going to the right place. He stepped out of the elevator and click-clacked his way down the dark hall to his left. He had never been to the third floor, but this was certainly a day of firsts. He turned around the corner, following the arrows that sat below “PIA” on the walls. The corridor came to an end 30 meters ahead and Kyle approached the lone doorway with an air of confidence he hadn’t known for what seemed like an eternity.

It was gone in an instant. There was a picture hanging on the door. A picture of Bjorn. And below it was a note. The note was faded and had obviously been hanging there for quite sometime. In barely legible handwriting it said “If you’re just stopping by, I’m in the lobby, its more interesting there. If you actually need me, I’m likely already doing my job.” It was signed with an ostentatious B.

Embarrassment, anger, bemusement, helplessness, bloodlust, despair, Kyle cycled through all these emotions with his fists clenched and his jaw on the floor. He forced a deep breath, spun on his heels and sprinted back to the elevator. The elevator hadn’t left the third floor yet so within seconds he was descending back to the lobby. When the doors opened he was on the move again, his head on a swivel, looking for Bjorn.

He ran to where he had spoken with the supposed doorman, there was no one there. Desperately out of shape, Kyle was winded, had a stitch in his side and a blister on his heel. He limped back towards the elevators.

“He left a message for you.” Lost in his own thoughts he almost didn’t hear it, but he finally lifted his head and looked around.

“Huh?”

“He left a message for you.” It was the receptionist, whose bored manner infuriated Kyle even more.

“Who did?”

“Who else?” She lazily cast her eyes towards the door.

“Bjorn?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what is it.”

“He said, ‘tell the new guy I’m on it and not to have an aneurysm.’”

“That’s it?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Are you sure?”

“Listen honey, all I do is sit here all day and take messages, and if you’re going to be like that you just go right ahead and have that aneurysm.”

“Right, err sorry. Do you know where he went?”

She was back to staring at her nails now and replied without looking up. “Think he went to the observatory.”

“ummmm”

A heavy sigh, “top floor, southwest building.”

And away he went.

It took some time to navigate to the building's main entrance from Kyle's less than prominent office in Post-Perfection Diagnostics, and he twice turned down the wrong corridor, delaying him valuable seconds, but expanding his vocabulary in a fashion that gave the lie to the theory of punctuated "equilibrium". When he finally burst into the lobby, his shirt was mostly untucked and his hair looked like he'd been running his hand through it nervously while sweating actively. The head receptionist followed his path with a certain amount of alarm, but did not move to intercept him. He was wearing a badge.

The doorman (Al? Mohammed? Peng?) was leaning casually against one of the inner pillars and talking to the air in front of him. Kyle stumbled to a stop just in the doorman's field of view and sputtered "Al? Mohammed? Er. Peng?"

The doorman paused his monologue and raised an eyebrow at Kyle quizzically. He tried to participate in the newcomer's thought process. "Carlos?"

"Right, sorry, Carlos, of course. Look, I need your help, we've got a situation."

The doorman narrowed his eyes uncertainly at Kyle.

"I, uh...I've got a situation." Kyle's eyes shifted uncertainly left and right. If Carlos couldn't help him, then he had wasted a great deal of time.

"Elka, can I call you back?"

"I'm sorry, I really don't kn--"

"Great, thanks. Hey, you too...yeah, you bet, I'll bring it with me tonight. ... No, I think that's pro--what did you say? You're shitting me. Over LA?" The doorman's attention shifted pointedly to Kyle. "I better go...okay...bye." He reached up and poked at the side of his head and squinted at Kyle thoughtfully. "You know there's a cloud over LA?"

Kyle made a muffled whimpering sound and then regained control of himself. He squared his shoulders and said "Look, Carlos, I figure you know basically everybody in the building, and I--"

"Who's Carlos?"

That took Kyle a moment to process. "I'm sorry? Uh...Carlos...your name..."

"My name is Björn."

"Ah. Well."

Björn blinked at him and prompted "'everybody in the building'...?"

"Ah...yes, well, I suppose you have a pretty good idea of who does what, and where they are, and all that. You've been here for a while, right?"

"Sure, yeah, I suppose I do."

"I'm trying to find Damage Control, or Operations, or whatever the hell. You know, the people that...do...things. Actual things." Kyle expanded on this point by vaguely flailing about with his hands. Björn watched this with some interest and then looked up at Kyle again.

"You mean like Post-Imperfection Actionables?"

Kyle looked back at the org chart clutched in his hand and saw 'PIA' in the middle of the sheet. "Is that what that means."

"Third floor, northeast corner." He watched Kyle race back towards the stairs with pursed lips. This was looking like a strange day. He returned his attention to his professional responsibility, the door, but his eyes kept flicking uncertainly to the sky.

run for the door

Kyle was not much for cussing. Narrow, straight, and all that. His series of shits had been rather an anomaly. But now he had reached a whole new level of desperation.

"Fuck."

The heavy office door had closed behind him, and he stood frozen in the hall for just a moment.

"Plan. Cloud. Fuck." he muttered to himself. Then, with a little shake, he went pattering off down the hallway. Click, click, click went his shoes in a regular rythm on the polished floor. He had given up all semblance of dignity, and was running as fast as years of a sedentary lifestyle would allow him to run. He came tearing into his office and began searching frantically through file folders. His office was pristine and his filing system immaculate, thank god, because he was really making a mess of it now.

"Orientation materials, orientation materials, here! Got to be a map, or an org chart in here somewhere ... yes!" He pulled out the map. The halls were color-coded. Diagnostics was blue. A soothing color, Kyle thought in some small part of his brain that still understood what it meant to be soothed. "Ok, what have we got here - 'Strategic Planning, Customer Relations, Inter-agency Affairs, Modeling, Forecasting, Data Analysis, Publications, .. what the fuck? Where's the post-sighting procedure, or damage control, or operations, or whatever? Think, Think!" he thought back to orientation, the dizzying trips up and down halls, the endless parade of well-groomed, mostly white male faces hovering above firm handshakes. What had it been called? The department that took over after him, who were they?" He couldn't remember. A thought had crept into his head like a tiny wad of chewing gum, and was now expanding in a huge bubble that threatened to crowd out all other functions -- maybe there hadn't been one. Maybe it wasn't that he couldn't remember them, they just didn't exist.

For one moment, just one tiny moment that he would later unsuccessfully attempt to sweep into the oblivion of forgetfullness, he succumbed to panic. He ran out into the empty hall and started yelling -- not terribly londly, but definitely yelling -- "Help! There's a cloud! Someone help!" In the middle of this undignified moment, it occurred to him who he should ask. The doorman. He had been around forever, and he knew everyone. With newfound purpose Kyle ran (his cardiovascular system was becoming increasingly functional with every passing moment) towards the front door.

No, he had not wondered.

“Sir…” he began.

“Decreased productivity,” said the Director. “Mass depression. Increased suicides. You are familiar with the mortality statistics, Kevin.”

“Yes, I…”

“Should people die because of your failures, Kevin?”

“It’s Kyle, sir. No, no one should die…”

“Of course it is,” said the Director. “Kyle. Scottish. Meaning narrow, straight or channel. Bodies of water. Perhaps you welcome this cloud.”

“No, sir,” said Kyle, with all the appropriate, and heartfelt, dread the question and answer demanded. The Director stepped from the shadows until he stood before his office windows, spanning 270 degrees and bubbling like a fishbowl from the specially devised turret. The southern California sun sifted gloriously across the office, spraying the colorless interior smoggy golds and auburns. It hovered majestic. It had not yet met the cloud.

“Perhaps,” continued the Director, “you would like to see it rain. Water in the streets. Flooding on the sidewalks. Bodies of water obstructing progress, creating dangerous conditions, causing accidents. Narrow. Straight. Channel.” Kyle did not answer. He could not. The Director turned, then, and looked at Kyle for the first time. He had a long face. Everything about it stretched up, towards the top of his turret bubble, or down, to his elongated shoes. The chin, thought Kyle, in that small part of his brain that still managed to function, despite impending career doom, was the worst offender of all, sweeping down and then turning up. The Director cocked his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe you would.”

“No,” said Kyle. “No. No. Absolutely not.”

“Tell me what you plan to do,” said the Director.

“What I plan to do?” said Kyle. “What I plan to do?”

“Do not repeat yourself,” said the Director. “I may decide you are too slow for my office. By my office, I really mean, this building. You follow.”

“I follow,” said Kyle. “It’s just…the thing is…I am in diagnostics. A little forecasting. I am very, no, extremely unfamiliar with clean up practice, or even post-sighting procedure. I don’t even know where their offices are, I mean, the offices of the people who do that sort of thing.”

“Now I begin to think you are unprofessional,” said the Director. He cast his jaundiced face downwards, and looked a little sad. He reached for his phone, and the mass of buttons on its surface.

“No, wait,” said Kyle. “Just wait. Of course I know what to do. Of course I have a plan.”

“A movie shoot is being disrupted, even as we engage in this infantile conversation,” said the Director.

“I’m on it,” said Kyle. And fled.

Control

Having gotten this statement out with some semblance of dignity, Kyle proceeded to hold his breath. The Director looked at him. Or rather, the Director's eyes rolled over Kyle's person like a large truck with no brakes rolls over a bump in the road, continuing their ponderous course over the door, the desk, and finally slowing to a top looking out the window.

Kyle waited.

The Director continued to stare out the window at nothing in particular.

Kyle started to fidget, twitching his right knee back and forth inside his trouser leg, and touching each fingertip of his left hand to his left thumb in turn -- index, middle, ring, pinkie, ring, middle index -- over and over. He went over the protocols in his head to see if there was an additional prompt he was supposed to give to the Director, some additional magic words. That was a dead end. "If an atypical observation within the atmosphere is made, report IMMEDIATELY to the Director." The Director was supposed to take it from here. Was there a chance he had not heard? Was there a chance Kyle had been unclear? What had he said, exactly? "There's a cloud over LA." Seemed clear enough. Middle, ring, pinkie, index, middle. Shit, shit, shit.

Kyle wondered if there was any chance he could just go back to his post now. He had completed the duties immediately required of him, and whatever the next phase was here, the Director could just let him know through the usual channels. He was about to turn and quietly walk out when the Director spoke.

"Haven't you always wondered what it would be like?"

Kyle's fingers stopped tapping. "Sir?"

"Haven't you always wondered? Just once - to see something uncontrolled. To just let it go."

Kyle was 24 years old and had never really questioned authority. You did not come to work here if you were the kind of person who liked to question authority. You came to work here if rules made you feel secure, knowing who was in control made you feel safe, and be able to follow protocols made you feel like you were doing a good job. This was a dream job for Kyle. But now, just at this moment, he suddenly did not feel safe nor secure. And he was feeling mightily uncertain about his job performance, too.

“Shit …shit … shit.” Kyle was desperately fighting off panic. He was teetering on the edge of hyperventilating and every exhalation came out as muted, breathless, “shit.” His shoes were clicking on the finely polished hallway in abnormal time as he alternately submitted to and then mastered his urge to break into a full sprint towards the director’s office.

When the warning light first came on, he assumed it was a joke. He was settling into his second month on the job and the hazing had slowed down some, but he was still the new guy. He had looked over his shoulder and walked up to the observation room expecting find someone giggling uncontrollably. But there had been no one. He returned to his station and ran a diagnostic, refusing to believe the warning was real. The diagnostic came back clean.

Kyle still felt it was some sort of hoax, the elaborate finale to his co-workers shenanigans. He opened the door to the great hall expecting a crowd to shout “Gotcha!” The hall was silent. With growing uncertainty he returned to his monitor and he opened the folder with the protocols. If he was to play the fool, he was going to do it by the book.

He checked the ground sensors, the buoys, the radar, and they told him the same story as the flashing warning light, which had not ceased. With a growing sense of dread he tasked a satellite. It took five minutes, and he waited with his hands covering his eyes. He looked up and saw nothing, but before his heart was halfway up his throat he realized the infrared filter was switched off. He punched three keys and he saw it with his own eyes. Blinked. Saw it again. Looked at the protocols, and began his chorus of shits on the way down the hall.

Why had he rushed down towards this door when he would do anything to avoid the conversation he was about to have? Because the protocols were clear and there was nothing else to do. He closed his eyes, stood up straight, took a deep breath and released it with a shit-free exhale. He did not knock, he turned the handle and strode inside.

This was the first time he had been in this office, some employees could go their entire careers without seeing the inside of it. That’s how well the system ran, and that’s how extraordinary this situation was. The director’s desk was empty, but Kyle quickly spotted him in the corner, standing in the shadows. The Director stepped into the light and Kyle did not hesitate. “Sir,” in the clearest, surest voice he could muster, “there’s a cloud over LA.”