Kyara strides across the campus mall hugging her sheet of dark glass close to her chest like someone might try to take it. She wants to pump her fist in the air because it has finally happened: an interview. With one week left before graduation, it had seemed there was no chance at graduating with employment. But this morning, the same sheet of electronic glass that had been pestering her with messages from her creditors, told her to come to the career office, and now it contains directions to a company that's hiring.

Her frustration highlights the parts of her life when she became bound--oh, how they happily handed out Buck cards to broke freshmen, explaining that they could cover expenses for two, maybe all four years if managed carefully. She wasn’t careful; the credit barely lasted one. No problem. Her "saviors and friends", her creditors, helped her during times of need by refinancing old debt into new loan programs.

Yesterday, the slice of dark glass strobed a blue color, signaling that a message waited. It was from the credit bureau and displayed a contract that she had signed four years ago, but this time a section of the fine print was blinking: applicants not employed within a week of graduation will be categorized as high risk. She had tried to break the glass by pressing it over her knee, but all it would do was bend and only barely.

She watches students rush to their morning classes: surf shirts, shorts, Birkenstocks, and the occasional show-off with clothing that shimmers with metaphysical illusions. The crowds pass by squat, two-story buildings that make up campus. The buildings are of steel and concrete wrapped in smoked glass, all cast by the same cookie cutter; The remains of a manufacturing company that had become too far in debt. It was purchased by a multinational, the jobs outsourced to Mexico, and the corporate campus sold and turned into a college.

It’s fitting that the college grew from the burial grounds of the bankrupt. Now freshmen arrive to start a life of building debt to became seniors who give hordes of creditors the legal right to go after their parents if the payments should stop.

A group of high school seniors pass by, staying clear of everyone else as if afraid of being sucked into the stream of students going to classes. They look around at everything, their eyes wide and innocent while a student on work-study from Admissions talks to them. Kyara tenses with the urge to scream: Don’t be like me. Eat boring, cheap dorm food. Stay out of the malls. Filter ad content from your glass. Don’t spend so much at parties. Four years isn’t a long time.

Kyara sighs, letting thoughts of messianic messages escape. Hell, four years IS a long time. A five hundred grand long time. A hundred year lifespan won’t be enough if she gets categorized as high risk. It’s her typical bad luck to graduate during a depressed economy.

She watches a Japanese man leaning against an announcements board writhing with metaphysical illusions. One ephect catches her eye, a dragon that emerges from a poster to peek over his shoulder. It's unclear if he knows what's happening behind his back because he's focused on watching the crowd. He’s a merchant looking for customers, and like other merchants he advertises, never forcing anyone to buy. And like the merchants of credit, once a customer starts, it’s hard not to return for more. While creditors have lawyers that politely point at five page contracts that were signed unread, this one--Hira--flexes his biceps and uses threats. Where creditors could legally garnish wages, or repossess everything she owns, Hira uses his fists to take back the chemical feel-good that his product allows.

Maybe his product is a better way to go? After graduation, with the last of her credit, she could purchase something that would make her enjoy graduation no matter her mood. If she can’t land a job, Hira would end things quickly instead of a long-drawn-out servitude to debt.

Stop thinking like that, she decides. She'll go to the interview. It’s face to face, not virtual. Travel arrangements need to be made.

Kyara walks past Hira making sure she doesn't look anywhere near his direction.

“Kara!”

She walks faster. Maybe he mispronounced her name, or maybe he’s looking for someone else.

A hand grabs her shoulder. “Kara.”

She stops, hugging her glass to her chest so hard it flattens her front.

Hira holds out a slip of dark glass. It activates and animated lights border what appears to be his business card. Her eyes gaze past the card to his wrist, around which is a tattoo of a shark, its teeth-lined jaws open, like Hira's arm is reaching out of its mouth. She takes the slip of glass, holding it by her fingertips as if the tattoo had salivated over it.

“See number?” He points to an account number in flashing text beneath his name and family affiliation.

Kyara nods.

“Roommate better pay up now or I take out on her hide.”

She nods again.

“Have a nice day,” he says, and then shouts a greeting at another student.

Kyara turns and walks double time, realizing that her roommate is in more trouble than she is.

She keeps checking over her shoulder until she reaches a two story building identical to the others. Lights glow dimly through the walls of smoked glass, emanating from the lamps of the lucky few dorm residents with rooms on the perimeter.

She rushes into the lobby. Cliff is on duty in the dorm's security station. She musters a smile at the overweight fifty year-old. Per the running dorm-wide joke, she pauses in the lobby to strike a sexy pose for the millimeter-wave radar embedded in the building entrance. Cliff smiles and waves her in without glancing at the radar screen.

Kyara takes the elevator to the second floor, and then exits into a large room with florescent lights humming from the ceiling.

She weaves through a forest of thin cubical-walls, constantly stepping over duct taped network and power cables until she arrives at her cubicle door. She slides the door open and steps into a three meter by three meter area, and something jumps out at her. Kyara twists to face her attacker but crashes into her cot, and falls, landing on her stomach. She reaches and grabs a bat she keeps near her cot and rolls onto her back, facing the figure standing above.

“Kyara! I didn’t know it was you,” Windy says.

Kyara stands, hanging onto the bat, and then she notices the glint of scissors in Windy’s hand, held at ready for stabbing.

“What the fuck?” Kyara says. "You tried to kill me!"

Windy stands, looking shocked. So Kyara adds, "And I was on my own side."

“Sorry. I didn’t know it was you.” Windy takes a step into her half of the room and sits on her own cot, her hands with the scissors in her lap. She doesn't smile at Kyara's joke; instead she stares at the scissors, her short red hair hanging forward, covering her face.

“You know about this?” Kyara says and tosses the slip of glass at her roommate. When it lands on the bed, the black glass glows, displaying Hira's card.

“I’m so red.”

“Windy! . . ." Kyara feels a lecture building up.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t start on me Officer Friendly.”

Stuffing the talk, Kyara stows the bat under the cot. “If you stab your roommate, who's going to help you when your friendly neighborhood Yakuza dealer shows up?”

Windy takes a deep breath and then exhales, lying back on her cot. “Thanks Kyara. With you, everything'll be green.”

Kyara sits at the desk crammed between their cots and activates the holoterminal built into its tabletop. She beams the latest copy of her resume into her glass. “Would it help if we called security?”

“No,” Windy says. “Hira always finds someone to let him in for a free sample. Hell, even I've let him in through the back.”

Kyara rummages through a two drawer dresser beneath her cot and pulls out a bunch of designer labels, things she bought when she thought four years would take forever.

When Kyara starts to put together different outfits, Windy sits up and says, “You got a break!”

“Yeah, I just got back from job services. I've an interview in three hours with some company called I-Action.”

"I knew you would do it! Metaphysics is the hot thing. I'd have gone into it but I could never focus like you do. Stop what you're doing! That shirt does not go with that skirt."

Windy kneels on the floor and sorts through the clothes stored beneath her cot. As she adds garments to Kyara's pile, she says, "No matter what, don't take the first offer. Just act chill and don't agree right away. They always lowball the first offer."

"But I'm so desperate," Kyara says, looking at the designer labels that helped her become this way.

"Think if it as part of the interview. A test to see if you're a sucker. Focus on how much debt you have. You want to get started on the right foot."

Kyara nods but isn't sure she can play that tough. In thirty minutes, with Windy's help, Kyara has a killer, guaranteed-to-get-the-job outfit and pretends that she's ready to play hardball.

###

Using the directions beamed into her glass, she spends the next two hours waiting at bus stops and keeping out of reach of street freaks. She reaches her destination, a cluster of thirty story buildings, within which nest a bunch of small to medium companies. Judging by the luxury SUVs parked in compact parking spots, the money pumping through their veins hasn’t diminished in the downturn.

Good, thinks Kyara, hoping that the next bus she takes will be to an auto dealer. She can't wait to go through the delicious hassle of trying to fit a luxury SUV into a parking spot.

I-Action isn't on the business center directory. Maybe the company is new. She taps her glass, and it lightens up from sleep mode so she can view the map in her interview packet. Soon she spots their sign hanging on a door, the sign looking disappointingly temporary.

She approaches until she sees herself in the building's mirrored wall. She stops and pulls her shoulders back into a confident posture and checks that her short bottle blonde hair looks perfect, and she adjusts her outfit so the skirt and jacket line up in the right places. The door slides open and she continues inside, the tapping of her high heels against the floor announces her arrival to a receptionist behind the lobby desk.

“Here for an interview?” the receptionist says, as if the word is tattooed across Kyara’s forehead.

“Yes.”

The receptionist hands her a glass. “Please sign here for the Emen-dee-ay.”

The sheet is filled with English-legalese; the page counter at the bottom reads 1 out of 30.

“Emen-dee-ay?" Kyara says, hating the clueless sound in her voice.

The receptionist pauses long enough to make Kyara feel self conscious, and then points to the title of the document. “MNDA, Metaphysical Non-Disclosure Agreement. After you sign, the MNDA ephect will be caused before the interview.” She points at a stainless steel door on the other side of the lobby. "But I can't let you start the interview until you sign."

“That’s green,” says Kyara feeling more yellow or red about why she's here. They wanted someone who could cause metaphysical ephects, not work in a vault.

The receptionist points at a holographic clock on the wall and says, “You have ten minutes to decide before you're late, and being late is never a good impression.” Her lips bend into a meaningless, polite smile.

Kyara sinks into the leather sofa, frantically skimming through the text, not understanding anything but ‘and’s, ‘therefore’s and ‘the subject’ while her mind races through her options. This is the first interview she’s locked down. Maybe this is something all of them do. Scratch that. Out of the handful of entry level job postings, only one or two mention signing a NDA. But an ‘M’NDA? Seems like overkill for a job interview.

Feeling filled with nerves, she takes a deep breath and tries to read. But her nervousness has her eyes darting through the paragraphs. After a few minutes, she gets the gist. ‘Yamaguchi Corporation’ shows up a bunch of times. The metaphysical and contractual binding is for six years, during which she is forbidden to sell any information gained in her interview; or in any way to compete, hinder, publicize information related to I-Action, its parent company Yamaguchi, or subsidiaries of Yamaguchi.

Kyara thinks: What kind of paranoid world do these people live in? What kind of interview is this?

Maybe companies under financial difficulty do this to prevent job candidates from spreading rumors. She glances at the hologram clock which shows sixty seconds left. If she doesn’t get a job soon, she’s going to need two full time jobs just to pay the interest on her ‘high risk’ credit rate.

Twenty seconds. What the hell. Never heard of anyone getting sued over a non-disclosure agreement, but lots of college students get screwed by high interest rates.

She signs at the bottom of the glass and rushes it to the lobby desk. Because the receptionist is engrossed in another glass, Kyara flicks the contract so it spins on the countertop. The receptionist glares and then stabs her finger down, stopping the sheet to check that it's signed.

“Good luck on your interview,” the woman says, giving her the polite smile. “Mr. Jones will apply the MNDA.”

She makes a call and before Kyara sits down, the stainless steel door clicks opens and a man in a black suit strides to the counter and takes the contract.

“Please follow me,” he says and pivots on one foot and strides back through the door.

Kyara rushes to keep up, striding so her footsteps don't sound rushed. Mr. Jones continues down the hallway and then opens a door and leads her into a room that's bare except for a chair surrounded by circles of glowing runes.

"Have you been placed under a MNDA before?"

She almost says ‘yes’ so he’ll think she’s a hot commodity, but then decides to play it straight and shakes her head. He sits her in the chair, mentioning that the high cost of MNDAs is offset by litigation savings. He asks her to hold out her hands, palms up, and then he sets the contract on them. He closes his eyes and sets his palms on the glass, above hers, and then he starts vocalizing standard anchoring tonals. The vein running down his forehead seems to enlarge while he focuses, and then it happens and she feels differently but can't say why.

"Your first interview is this way,” he says and starts out of the room, gesturing for her to follow.

Crap, she realizes, if there's a first then there's more than just one.

She catches up and follows him into an office.

"Your interview is here, Mr. Sill," Mr. Jones says and then leaves.

Mr. Sill spends an hour probing what she knows about finding Leigh lines and where they are in the nearby region--basic stuff.

Afterwards, Mr. Sill leads her down the hallway and leaves her with an ancient looking lady who asks her to paint rune circles with a lizard-hair brush. Kyara requests an air brush, but after listening to the old bag rant about how a lizard’s hair brush is mythologically, theologically, and spiritually superior for rune creation, she spends the next hour dipping and stroking with the tiny brush. She could finish in half the time with an airbrush and the lines aren’t as clean, but the lady is happy and leads her to her next interviewer.

This one is a short man with a desk statue of Napoleon riding a horse. As soon as she sits, he stands and starts pacing, grilling her on power symbols and how to blend them together to cause different ephects. When she handles the questions, he leans over his desk and asks her to cause a simple ephect.

Kyara decides to use one she's seen her favorite band use: confetti that flashes to the beat of music. While focusing to cause it, he snaps his fingers near her head at random times but she gets it snowing confetti, strobing as he snaps his fingers.

She decides to shows off and keep it sustained, letting confetti build up on his floor. As he returns to his seat, he ‘accidentally’ knocks the statue over, but she keeps it raining flashing paper.

Satisfied, he takes her to an empty office, waving away all her questions. He gestures her to sit in the executive chair behind the desk. Kyara's heart thuds as she sinks into the leather and she can hear the old bat complaining to Mr. Sill and Mr. Jones about Kyara requesting an airbrush and how that's just another example of how the universities are taking the mysticism out of metaphysics.

As soon as everyone is in the room, the finger-snapper says, “We would like to offer you a job."

Kyara fights the urge to pump her fist in the air and scream out ‘YES!’ Just like Windy had suggested, she just looks at them and dares to rock the chair back, acting very chill, scoping the office with her peripheral vision. The furniture looks new except for a sticker on the side of a file cabinet. The holoterminal built into the desk looks cutting edge. She aches to check out the view but the window is behind her.

Then Mr. Jones pushes a dark glass toward her and tells her to tap it.

She does and when it lights up, the figure is too high--too good to be true high. With the current economy, she expects to start at about a quarter as much, assuming she got a job at all. She looks at the sticker on the cabinet; it’s of an altered state band--Flying with Blue Jiggy, one of her favs which uses ephects to bring their listeners on a hallucinatory trip.

“What do you think?” says the old bat.

Kyara blinks. She’s crazy if she doesn’t just say yes. She should say yes before she wakes up and finds out it's a dream, but she doesn’t know anything about the company and hears herself ask, “What does I-Action do?”

Finger-snapper looks at the view over her shoulder.

“We’re in the insurance business,” says Mr. Jones, walking over to the window and looking out. The view must kick ass. “We used to be called InsuraDyne until we were bought by another company last month.” Mr. Jones adjusts his tie.

She’s heard of insurance companies hiring metaphysicists to read the auras of clients with big insurance claims. If 90% of communication is non-verbal, that 90% is easily observed in auras, which most can't see since metaphysicists are rare.

“We dropped the ‘insura’ part. The new owners wanted us to diversify,” Finger-snapper says.

He isn’t looking her in the eye, in fact, none of them are. She wants to be rude enough to commit the faux pas of aura voyeurism, but she can tell by how the vein in Mr. Jone's forehead is throbbing that their auras would be violet.

“So what else do you do?” she asks.

They look at each other like they’re trying to figure out how much to tell her. She notices scuff marks on the wall next to the Blue Jiggy sticker and a black smudge on the desk from a shoe.

"I don't know why you're hesitating. You won't find a better offer," the old bat says.

Kyara opens her mouth, but then just closes it.

Mr. Jones says, “Our clientele has changed. Instead of insuring homeowners and drivers, we insure small businesses.”

That sounds innocent enough. “Why do you have so many physicists on staff?” she asks, gesturing at them. It’s unusually to have four decent physicists at such a small company.

“We incur high overhead, but have high profit margarines. Our clientele usually tries to cheat us,” says Finger-snapper. “We visit all of our clients each month to collect what they owe.”

The old bat says, “Sometimes, the cheap bastards need their heads knocked together. When that happens, you call your big brother Sake to take care of it.”

A picture renders in Kyara’s mind--a smaller business gets bought out by a group of organized criminals that are trying to look legitimate.

The salary digits glow back at her from the sheet. The Blue Jiggy sticker, the scuffs, they’re all wear marks of a living, breathing person who used to sit in this very desk. She gets the creepy feeling that there's a name plate in the desk, maybe even a drawer full. “Whose shoes am I filling? What happened to them?”

All of them look over her shoulder at the glorious view. The old bat says, “He didn’t measure up."

The office feels wrong, like moving into a missing sibling's bedroom. The pay is good but not that good. Kyara stands and says, “No thanks."

None of them move and she gets the feeling they might try something.

"My roommate and friends know I'm here for this interview.”

They shift around uncomfortably. Finger-snapper grabs the glass and scribbles on it with his finger, and then he slides it back. “We’re prepared to offer you a generous signing bonus.”

She doesn’t pick it up, thinking that Windy would be proud, she broke through their low-ball. Though she doesn't want to look her eyes are greedy, and in a glance she knows there are enough zeros to take a big chunk out of her twenty year loan. She’d be solvent in a year.

Kyara stares out the window to see what's so wondrous:shiny cars twinkle in the parking lot, buildings with mirrored walls hide what's inside and reflect only what's outside--more mirrored buildings that reflect the same. Like a roomful of people that are afraid that others will see their inner-selves, and so they steer the conversation away from themselves and onto the other.

Kyara says, “Sorry, I’d like to go now.”

Finger-snapper just walks out. The old bat, Mr. Sill follow, the old bat complaining about how ungrateful today's kids are. Mr. Jones shakes his head and starts to say more.

"Really. I've had enough," Kyara says.

Mr. Jones takes her to the stainless steel door and opens it. The door and jamb are thick, bombproof thick. Kyara leaves the office, walking between the mirrored buildings. The sun beats on her with waves of heat. She walks between rows of luxury cars, their grills and chromed bumpers seem to be shaped like they are jeering at her.

Her high heels are cutting deeply into her feet by the time she catches a bus. She rides with her eyes closed, feeling her seat vibrate as the bus climbs a hill. She feels like she's floating, nothing solid to cling to, at the mercy of any jetty or puff of air that can push her up, down, left or right.

Crap. She’s graduating and the only interview she got was some underworld job. Maybe she should have taken it. At least she wouldn’t have to ride the bus before she gets switched off. At least there's one positive--the interviewing practice will help if she ever gets another break. The first interview with . . . painting . . . the guy did something with his hands. . . . There was something about painting, and something about a bat.

Kyara struggles as memories of the I-Action people scatter in her head like pieces on a game board knocked awry. Trying to remember how she got to their office, she attempts to access the map in her glass but accidentally fingers the ‘clear’ icon, and the information is gone.

By the time she’s walking through the manufacturing building turned dormitory, she can’t remember why she turned down the job. She follows the maze of cube walls back to her room in a daze while mixed up feelings of the interview stumble through faded memories. It all stops at the sound of a scream.

Windy!--Kyara thinks and slips off her high heels. She runs to their room and standing above their busted door is Windy yelling at Hira who is pressing himself against her, her back to the wall.

Kyara says, “Leave her alone!”

Hira slaps Windy hard enough to spin her head sideways, her hair flaring away from her head.

“She doesn’t have any money!” Kyara pulls on Hira's arm.

“How about her roommate, huh?” Hira leaves Windy and catches Kyara’s hand and squeezes. Her finger bones feel like they're being crushed.

“Stop,” Kyara screams.

Hira releases her and she backs into a wall. The Yakuza puts his hands on each side of her and leans close, his nose nearly touching hers, and the only thing she can breathe is the same air. She stares back, fighting to concentrate, trying to cause an ephect--catch his hair on fire, make his skin itch, something! His hand moves, reaching down, brushing her breast, and then flicks his hand back in front of her face. Between his fingers is a small dark glass. It activates, showing his business card.

“I want my money!” he says, and presses the corner of the glass into her neck. Its beveled edge digs into a muscle.

It happens automatically, a natural reaction to having someone jab anything into her body: she knees him in the groin. Hira staggers back, his eyes rolling back. With some kind of reflex reaction, he holds a switch blade in his hand and then collapses, moaning.

Kyara pulls Windy out of the cubicle and they stumble down one path, turn and move along another, hiding in the aluminum and plastic forest.

“You shouldn’t have hurt him,” Windy hisses.

A yell echoes out: “I’ll fucking cut you both!”

Kyara drags Windy further, stepping over and around duct taped cables and floor lamps. Like a wilderness that turns silent when a predator hunts, the indigenous sounds of radios and people talking have stopped. Kyara hears the snick of a flimsy door being locked near them and the soft susurrations of a desk being pushed over carpet to barricade the entrance of another.

Windy tries a door at random. It opens, and the cubical is empty. “We should hide.”

Kyara shakes her head. "We need to keep moving. We're dead if we get cornered. The elevators are that way." She points down an aisle. “Let's get security up here and arrest that asshole.”

“No, I’m hiding here. Security has never done shit to Hira.”

Kyara decides she has a point. But it’s one thing to let in a known dealer; it’s another to let students get killed. “Stay. I’ll get help.”

Windy nods, and then closes and locks the thin door.

While Kyara runs through the aisles, she hears Hira smashing into cubes and yelling in Japanese. She enters the elevator and hits the lobby button. As the doors close and the elevator moves down, she glances at what she has clenched in her hand. It’s Hira’s card, and beneath his name it says ‘a proud brother in the Yamaguchi family.’ The elevator opens to the lobby. She steps out of the elevator, blinking in the bright lobby light, watching a group of students pass by and enter the lounge.

Kyara stops and looks around. She hates it when this happens--standing like an oaf and trying to remember why she came down here. Maybe she was going to check for a package?

Cliff looks up from watching a movie on his station monitor and waves. Kyara waves back and goes to a bank of mailboxes, guessing that maybe she came down to check if she has any packages, but the glass on her mailbox drawer says 'empty.'

She decides to hang in the lounge instead of returning to her room just yet, hoping that why she came down here will come to her. On the way there, another group of students pile out of the elevator. One guy shakes his head and says, “Diss, Hira is sure switched at someone.”

A woman says, "Some junky isn't keeping up the payments.”

A mental picture of Hira slapping Windy flicks through Kyara’s mind. Kyara stops, wondering where that image came from. The security station is vacant and the dorm doors are locked. Cliff's probably taking a bio-break. Something feels wrong. She needs to check on Windy.

She concentrates, holding the mental image and runs to the elevator punching the button for the second floor. Pins and needles flow through her body, jabbing at her concentration, poking and prodding for a weakness, knocking at her mind to think of something else and forget. But she locks the picture of Hira and Windy in her head, and runs back to their cube. Hira and Windy aren’t there. She stands there, feeling confused. . . . What was she doing?

An angry voice shouts something about ‘Kara’ and ‘Windy’ in Japanese and broken English. Kyara’s feelings untangle and her anger flares, illuminating a memory of Windy's hair flying as her head spins from the impact of the slap, and then Hira's face, so close to Kyara's face all she can breathe is what he exhales. She gets the bat from under her cot. Concentrating on her visualization of Hira slapping Windy, she edits out Windy like she's creating a new ephect power symbol, until only Hira's in her mind, his back to her.

Kyara follows an aisle, blending into the visual of Hira a picture of her smacking the bat into the side of his head.

Pins and needles seem to circulate trough her body, becoming larger and fiercer, poking through her veins. Her head pounds while she holds that picture and concentrates on finding her target.

She trips over an electronic cord, uprooting it from the floor; she becomes dizzy, her vision spins as needles crawl up her arm to her shoulders and then spill into her chest, hurting her lungs with each breath.

There's more shouting in Japanese, sounding closer. She keeps focusing; Kyara stumbles into a cube wall and turns up another path until Hira's in front of her. But the picture is all wrong--he’s facing her and someone else is standing next to him. She updates the picture in her head, and screams, charging him, swinging the bat. Something gives within herself--the needles flow through her head and into her eyes. Splotches of light color pain as needles tumble into her retinas and force themselves through her eyelids. But she keeps the picture in her mind and swings again. The bat strikes something so hard it jolts out of her hands. She collapses to the floor, trying not to move while the pins shrink away.

“Kyara, Kyara, . . . Kyara!”

Kyara only sees yellow splotches and then Windy’s face. A hand tugs at Kyara's arm, pulling her upright.

“You kicked Hira’s ass! I can’t believe it!” Windy says.

Kyara stands, fighting for balance of self and mind. “What happened?”

“You clobbered him!”

Swaying on her feet, the yellow splotches evaporate. Windy keeps shaking her. "You really did it to him. I tell you--I tell you, I'm quitting that shit."

Kyara knocks Windy's hands away and says “Stop it. Where is he?”

Windy leads her to the elevator. “Cliff came up to scan what the yelling was about and drug Hira off. He wants us to make a statement.”

Windy's shaking so much it takes her a few tries to press the button for the lobby. As the elevator moves, she leans her forehead against the wall and says, "I'm so done with him. It only feels good for a moment and then this kind of shit always happens."

Kyara holds still until the elevator door opens.

They walk to the security station. Cliff is gazing at the top of his security station, looking lost in thought.

Windy leans over his desk like Hira might be lying on the floor. “Where’s Hira?” says Windy.

Cliff still stares at the desktop as if trying to remember something.

“Hey!" Windy waves her hand in front of his face. Cliff jerks, surprised by Windy's hand. A dark glass falls from his hand and onto the table.

Windy says, “Shouldn’t the police be here? Where's Hira?”

He stands. “Police? Is something wrong?”

Windy says, “You’re damn right something’s wrong.”

Kyara picks up the glass. It's Hira’s business card.

"What's wrong with you?” shouts Windy. “I get it! You took a payoff!”

Kyara pushes her roommate away from Cliff. She takes one of Cliff's cards from the top of his desk, and then she pulls her roommate into the elevator and sends it to their floor. On the way up, she looks at Cliff's card.



SecurT

hotline: msg:securUSA/terminal5

Subsidiary of Yamaguchi

As usual, it’s the fine print that says it all. At the bottom of Hira's card it says he's a subsidiary of Yamaguchi too.

###

It’s a few months after graduation when Kyara drives her new ‘I’ve landed a job’ car back to drop in on Windy. The car's brand new and Asian; she couldn't afford European. It took a few months to find a job--months of high interest and not being able to make the payments. So as soon as she landed a job doing special ephects for a party planning company, she transferred her debt to a hungry new finance company and got the credit to purchase the car. Money’s tight so eating out is verboten, and her apartment is a shoebox. But the simulated leather steering wheel and how the seat presses against her during acceleration is so worth it.

Feeling like a big shot, she parks her red SUV at the dorm and hops out, wondering what Windy will say when Kyara surprises her. Outside of quick messages, they haven't talked in months.

Cliff waves her through the lobby and soon Kyara is knocking on the door of her old cube. Her new job keeps her busy but today she was able to leave early when the traffic was light and drive to the University. Windy hadn't responded to her message about dropping in, so hopefully she's around.

Windy’s new roommate, Sarh, lets her in. Windy’s on her cot, hidden beneath covers to block out the overhead fluorescent’s simulated afternoon light. Sarh says that Windy's only gotten up to use the bathroom.

Kyara flips the covers off Windy’s head. Electrodes are pasted over each temple. A cord twisted into the first button of her pajamas connects the trodes to something beneath the covers.

Windy, explains Sarh, is into a new product since Hira cut her off. A new dealer is pushing something called mind’gasm. Windy's getting all the free samples she can before the dealer discovers that she’s broke.

After gently shaking Windy's arm, her eyes open.

"Kyara," Windy says slowly, talking as if her mind is occupied with something else. "How are you?"

"You said you were finished with this shit," Kyara says.

"Oh . . . Don't lecture me now Officer Friendly, I'm feeling so good."

"Dammit," Kyara says, and then holds back the rest of what she wants to say. Windy's eyes close again and she frowns whenever Kyara tries to disturb her. Kyara gives up and flips the covers over Windy's head and leaves. Walking back to her car, in the sunlight it shines like a gem. Before she gets on the freeway, she pulls into a gas station and buys some gas. She has nothing in her bank account so she gets it on credit. She knows she shouldn't, but she goes to a burger joint across the street because she isn't really interested in the leftovers in the fridge. Her Buck card is almost maxed out, but when she gets home, she'll shop for a new one with a higher limit.

She knows she shouldn't. But if she acts fast, she can lock in a new deal before they find out she's over extended. She knows she shouldn't, but does because it'll make her feel good.

And life continues--She goes home and makes it happen, hoping she can stay one step ahead.

The end.