Corporate Geometry of Loss

Marcus stared at his computer screen, watching the cursor blink like a dying heartbeat. The corporate hierarchy chart on his monitor resembled nothing so much as a pyramid scheme of the soul—each level climbing higher over the backs of those below. His boss, Sandra, had just called him a zombie for the third time this week.

"You're sleepwalking, Marcus," she'd said, her fingers drumming the conference table. "I need your brain in the room, not your body occupying a chair."

He hadn't bothered explaining that his brain was somewhere else entirely—some twenty years back, on a baseball diamond in Ohio, where life had been as simple as the arc of a pitched ball. His father had taught him to hit that summer. The old man's hands, calloused and warm, had guided Marcus's fingers around the bat's handle. Now those hands were gone, and Marcus couldn't remember the last time he'd felt anything but cold air conditioning against his skin.

His phone buzzed. Elena.

"We need to talk," her text read. The same four words that had been haunting him for weeks.

He ran a hand through his hair—thinning now, another betrayal by a body that was slowly, steadily eroding. Outside his window, a palm tree swayed in the artificial breeze of the office plaza's climate-controlled courtyard. It looked as real as his marriage, as authentic as the passion he used to feel for his work.

Marcus thought about that pyramid again. All those people climbing toward something—money, status, some phantom version of success. And where had it gotten him? A corner office with a view of a parking structure. A wife who looked through him rather than at him. A daughter who visited twice a year and spent both occasions checking her phone.

"Zombie," Sandra had said. Maybe she was right. Maybe the living were the ones who'd figured out how to stop moving altogether.

He stood up, grabbed his coat, and walked out. No email. No explanation. Just his feet carrying him toward something he couldn't name but desperately needed to find. The palm tree outside seemed to nod its approval.