Chapter One

Alex woke up with a start.  Someone had tapped him on the shoulder.  He hadn’t even realized he’d been asleep.  It took him a second to get his bearings and remember where he was.  Looking around quickly to assess the situation, he saw a computer, a legal pad, a stack of printed documents, and walls covered with grey-brown beige fabric.

He was at work.  And apparently he’d fallen asleep again.

Missy, one of the other administrative assistants he worked with, stood next to him.  She was wearing a red cardigan and black slacks today.  She also had her arms crossed, and was looking at him with a mixture of amusement and annoyance.

Yep, she wants me, he thought.

“Leslie wants to see you in her office, Alex,” Missy said.

“OK, I’ll go in and chat with her after I’ve finished this, uh…” Alex trailed off.  He did his best to remember what the hell had he been working on before he’d, apparently, fallen asleep.  Again.  He decided he was going to need to get a coffee maker to just keep here in his cubicle.

“Leslie was pretty insistent that she needs to talk to you right now,” Missy said.  “You should probably just go before she gets annoyed.”

Leslie did have a tendency to get a little cranky if things weren’t going exactly her way.  Alex grabbed his legal pad and a pen, and stood up.  He noticed that Missy had a doubtful look on her face, and wondered what kind of unpleasant project he was going to get today.  The week before, he’d had to move all the files from one set of filing cabinets to another on the other side of the office.

It seemed like the kind of task he’d have been assigned in boot camp as a disciplinary measure, only with less camaraderie and more soul-crushing boredom.

He didn’t have high hopes that the next assignment would be much more fun than the last.

Alex walked into Leslie’s office.  Her office décor was an odd cross between saccharine-sweet pictures of kittens and drawings of children with overly large eyes looking innocent and weirdly melancholy, and preserved animal skeletons and decorated skulls.

“Hey Leslie, what’s up?” Alex said.

Leslie glanced up and him, and said, “Hey Alex, close the door behind you.”

Uh oh, Alex thought.  He closed the door, and sat down across from Leslie.

Leslie produced some papers from a folder on her desk and slid the over to Alex.

“Alex, I’m sorry to tell you that your services are no longer required by Temro Professional Services.  Please gather your personal belongings and leave immediately,” Leslie said.

Damn it, Alex thought.  Again?

“Is this because I fell asleep?  Look, I’ll get a coffee maker and it won’t happen again.  I can…” Alex said before Leslie interrupted him.

“Alex, you fall asleep every day.  The records I have from I.T. show that you’ve been spending the better part of your days playing online video games.  We’re not paying you to get better at Angry Birds.  Look, I like you, Alex.  Have you considered that maybe working in an office is not the right path for you?  You might be better suited to something a little more active.”

Alex didn’t know quite what to say to that.  In the last year, he’d already been fired from two other office gigs, and three factories, and he wasn’t sure if his temp agency was going to be willing to keep placing him for much longer.

Leslie continued, “Maybe you’ll be happier doing something in a service industry, or learning a trade.  Have you thought about construction, or landscaping?  Or maybe you could work in a restaurant.  I don’t know, but to be honest, you don’t seem like you’re cut out for office work.”

After a long pause, Alex stood up.  He scratched his forehead and said, “Thanks, I’ll take that under consideration.  Have a good one, Leslie.”

Shit, shit, shit, he thought.  I’ve done it again.  How many more times am I going to blow it before I find a place where I can manage to avoid getting fired for more than two months?

He got back to his cubicle, took a quick look around and realized that the only personal items he had to gather were his jacket and his backpack.  He grabbed them and walked out of the office.  The only co-worker he passed on the way out was Missy.  He did notice Leslie was keeping an eye on him from the doorway of her office.

“See ya, Missy,” he said as he walked by her. 

She glanced at his jacket and backpack, and said, “Have a good night, Alex.  See you tomorrow.”

“No you won’t,” Alex said, and gave her a crooked smile.

After he got into his car, a red and black 1993 Ford Mustang 5.0, he noticed that it wasn’t even lunch time yet.  He wished Leslie would have fired him the night before so he could have slept in instead of getting dressed and coming into work just to get fired before lunch.

He sat for a few minutes, trying to think of something to do with the rest of the day.  It was just after ten o’clock in the morning, so his favorite restaurants would just be barely opening.  Of course, now that he was unemployed, again, going out and spending money at a restaurant might not be the best plan. 

Everything else he could think of doing involved spending money too.  Eventually, he decided going home and calling the temp agency to see if they had any other work for him was probably the best course of action.

It took a little cranking, as usual, but the Mustang started after a few seconds, coming to life with its characteristic rumble.  Alex put it in gear, and was about to start driving when he realized that if he had to go in to the temp agency today, he might as well not head home yet.  He shut down the Mustang and dug his phone out of this pocket.

He called his temp agency, and the receptionist answered on the second ring.

“Good morning, Sanderson Staffing Solutions, how can I help you?” the voice on the other end of the line said.

“Good morning, this is Alex Minor.  Is Jake available?”

“One moment, I’ll transfer you over to him,” the receptionist said.  After a fraction of a second, awful, distorted, hold music started playing.

I wonder if hold music was devised as punishment for interrupting people who don’t particularly want to talk, Alex thought.  I wonder if Jake is going to answer, for that matter.  When is he going to give up and tell me I’m on my own for my job hunt?

He only had to tolerate a minute or two of a hold-music rendition of Canon In D so distorted it sounded almost like it was intentional before Jake came on the line.

“Hi Alex, what can I do for you?”

“Hey Jake, I’m looking for a job,” Alex said.

“Wow, already?  What did you do this time?”

Alex didn’t think their relationship was close enough for that kind of humor, personally.  But he needed another job, and Jake hadn’t let him down in the past.

“I didn’t do anything, Jake.”

“Well, that explains it then.  You do know you’re supposed to, like, do stuff at work, right?” Jake said.

Alex felt his blood pressure increase a bit, and it was just about all he could do to avoid telling Jake that he could take his sarcasm and shove it.

“Ha ha, Jake,” Alex said.  “I guess this company just wasn’t a good fit for me.”

“I think this is the sixth company that has brought you on and discovered you’re not a good fit, Alex.  You’ve got to understand that every time I send you out and you get canned, the reputation of my agency gets damaged a little more.  Companies aren’t going to deal with me if I keep sending them people they have to fire after two months.”

“Aw, come on, I’ve just had a run of bad luck,” Alex said.

“Sorry Alex, I don’t have anything for you right now.  If something comes up that I think you’ll be a good fit for, I’ll give you a call,” Jake said.

After Alex had ended the call, he leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and took a few deep breaths.

OK, OK, this is just a little speedbump.  No big deal.  I’ll find another temp agency.  Someone will have a job for me, no problem.  I’ll be working again in two weeks, he thought.

The only problem was that he didn’t believe himself.  He was in a rough spot.  There weren’t a whole lot of jobs he was immediately qualified for when his skills and experience mainly consisted of: can use Microsoft Word, and spot an IED from fifty yards away.

At the moment he had his choice of menial office and factory jobs, all of which bored him so badly that he spent most of his time at work trying to keep himself entertained.  And he’d already been fired from six of those jobs.  It was getting hard explain why his employment contracts kept being ended early.

Alex sighed, muttered, “shit,” and started the Mustang again.

He needed to either get completely drunk, or go work out.  After debating the merits of both options, he decided that working out was the best bet.  The chief benefits were that lifting weights was free, and he was much less likely to find himself incapacitated and bored, but unable to do anything about it, if he worked out.  When he drank, he usually ended up bored out of his mind.  And boredom was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. 

With that decision made, Alex put the Mustang in gear, and drove home.

By the following Friday night, Alex had worked out to exhaustion every day, cleaned his apartment completely, and taken care of all the errands he’d been meaning to get to. 

On Saturday morning, he got up and found himself in need of something to do.  He decided that maybe he was due for a camping trip.  Fresh air and hiking would probably do him good, and he had nothing but time at the moment.  He had a list of a few things he needed to replace or just stock up on for his camping kit, and decided that it was good of a day as any to cruise over to an army surplus store and see what they might have for him.

Alex hadn’t been to Patriot Surplus before, but the familiar musty smell of surplus store put him at ease immediately.  The employee working behind the counter, a young blonde man who was maybe twenty years old, barely looked at him as he walked in and mumbled a half-hearted, “Hello,” before going back to reading his copy of Soldier of Fortune.

Yep, this place was OK.  Alex was pretty confident they’d have what he needed.

He was wandering the aisles, examining the odd bag or bit of cooking equipment, when he saw a familiar face.  Alex broke into a smile.  It was a military buddy of his, one he hadn’t seen for quite a while.

“Hey, Marlboro, how ya been?” Alex said to a man with tightly cropped hair and a bushy mustache who was digging through a bin of brightly colored 550 paracord. 

Marlboro turned, and smiled widely as he recognized Alex.  He reached out and shook Alex’s hand with a bone-crushing grip.

“Hey Alex! Good to see you.  I’m doing good.  I haven’t seen you in a couple years, what are you up to now?”   

“Yeah, it’s been a while.  I’m not up to much, just lost my job last week and I figured I might go camping before I start the job hunt all over again.”

Marlboro’s face fell.

“Shit, man, sorry to hear that.  What have you been doing for work?”

“Office stuff, mostly.”

“Fax machine monkey, huh?  I had one of those jobs.  I think I lasted a whole week before I told off my boss and quit,” Marlboro said.  “Sitting at a desk is just too boring, I don’t know how you do it.”

“Well, I haven’t been too good at it.  Not sure why, but I just can’t seem to do the work.  It’s not like it’s hard.”

“Sounds like you’re bored, man.  I get it.  You’re a man of action like me, not an office worker.  You need a different line of work.  I’ve been working as a bicycle courier lately, it’s been great!  It’s all action all the time.  Lots of exercise, lots of excitement, and I’ve managed to score a few dates with the receptionists I’ve met in the line of duty.”

“Wow, that sounds like a blast.  How’s the pay?” Alex said.

“It’s OK.  Not great at first, but once you start making a lot of deliveries in a day it adds up,” Marlboro said.  “Oh, hey, I can probably hook you up with a gig if you want.  There’s a fair amount of turnover.  Some people can’t handle playing in traffic all day everyday.  Give me your number, I’ll give it to my boss and tell him you’re all right.”

Well, I don’t have much to lose, Alex thought.  If it sucks, I can quit.  And it can’t be much worse than taking another shitty job doing robot work in an office.

He gave Marlboro his contact info, and hoped he’d be able to get back to work quickly.  He figured there couldn’t be too much to it, he’d just have to learn his way around the city.  Piece of cake.