Corporate Pyramid Schemes

Sarah stared at her iphone at 2:14 AM, the blue light washing over her exhausted face. Three unread messages from David. She'd ended it yesterday—six years of relationship dissolved in a coffee shop conversation—but he couldn't seem to hear her. Or wouldn't.

Her golden retriever, Barnaby, whined softly from his bed beside her desk. He was the only living thing in her apartment that still looked at her with something resembling hope. Everyone else at work had that glazed-over expression she'd come to recognize after three years at Vertex Solutions. The zombie shuffle down corridors at 9 AM, dead eyes reflecting fluorescent lights, animated only by caffeine and mounting debt.

The corporate org chart was a pyramid, and she'd finally figured out her place in it: not climbing toward the apex, but buried somewhere in the middle, supporting weight she couldn't see while those above her pretended she didn't exist. Her boss had called it 'synergy' during her performance review. 'You're a team player, Sarah. That's rare.' Translation: you'll eat whatever we serve.

Barnaby nudged her hand with his wet nose, demanding to be walked. In the park, she watched another zombie office worker stumble past, muttering into an earpiece about Q4 projections. The man's dog—some anxious terrier mix—pulled toward Barnaby, and for a moment, the two animals did what humans had forgotten how to do: simply exist together, without transaction or agenda.

Sarah's phone buzzed. David again: *Can we talk?*

She thought about the pyramid scheme of modern adulthood: work to buy things to comfort yourself so you can work more. The endless cycle of wants disguised as needs. How she and David had built their relationship like a pyramid too—solid base, widening middle, but now? Now they were just two people standing at the apex, wondering how they'd gotten there and why neither of them could remember wanting it.

Barnaby barked at a squirrel, and something in Sarah cracked open. She typed back: *No.*

Then she deleted the word. Typed: *I don't want to talk. I want to remember who I was before I became this.*

The message sent. She stood there in the predawn darkness, her dog leaning against her leg, and for the first time in three years, the zombie shuffle felt like something she could choose not to do.