Dead Pool Rising

The fluorescent lights hummed their usual sickly melody as Elena stared at the spreadsheet. Another quarter, another set of bullish projections from management. The numbers didn't lie—she'd been running the same calculations since February—but honesty had never been part of the job description. The betting pool in the breakroom had her layoffs at Friday, 3 PM. She'd put money on Monday morning herself.

Across the aisle, Marcus had been staring at the same cell for twenty minutes. His skin took on that peculiar grayish hue they all developed after too many nights with inadequate sleep and excess caffeine. They were all zombies now—shuffling between desks, moaning about meetings, feeding on stale donuts and despair. The real horror wasn't that they'd died inside years ago. It was that they kept coming to work anyway.

"Yourbullshit meter broken yet?" Marcus whispered without looking up.

Elena smiled despite everything. "Shattered in 2019."

The pool on her desk rippled in the afternoon light—cheap motivational gift from a leadership retreat. She'd filled it with paper clips instead of water. Sometimes she imagined diving in, surfacing in a world where spreadsheets didn't exist and people meant what they said.

"They want another forecast," he said. "Something bullish for the investors."

"I'll create one. Want to know the secret?"

"Always."

"Pick a number. Then work backwards like your life depends on it. Because it does."

He laughed, the first genuine sound she'd heard all week. Outside, autumn leaves skittered across the parking lot like tiny refugees fleeing the coming winter. Somewhere, real things were happening.

Elena opened a new spreadsheet. The cursor blinked with patient insistence. Tomorrow she'd be someone else. Somewhere else. But tonight, she had bull markets to invent and zombies to placate and a betting pool that would probably pay out before the quarterly report.