Riddles in the Breaking Room

The vending machine offered nothing but the usual hunger. Mark pressed his forehead against the cold glass, watching the _orange_ Fanta roll down with a clatter he felt in his teeth. Three years of data entry had turned him into something worse than a machine—a _zombie_ in dress shoes, typing without thinking, dreaming without sleeping.

He'd played _baseball_ once, back when his knees still bent the right way. College. That felt like someone else's life now, like stories he'd heard about a brother who died young. The HR director—sixty, brittle, wearing too much perfume—had asked him yesterday if he felt "engaged." He'd wanted to scream. Instead he'd nodded.

The office _cable_ was down again. No internet, no work, just the silence of eighteen computers that couldn't connect to anything real. His coworkers sat like statues, pretending to type, waiting for the tether to snap back so they could return to their assigned tasks.

Mark walked to the window. Below, the city grayed out in rain. He thought about the _sphinx_—the riddle, not the statue. What walks on four legs, then two, then three? The answer was man, but the real riddle was simpler: what forgets it was ever alive?

His phone buzzed. Sarah from Accounting, asking if he wanted to grab lunch. He'd been meaning to ask her for months. Now he just stared at the screen. Some other time, he typed. Some other life.

The orange soda warmed in his hand. Somewhere, a baseball game was probably starting. Somewhere, people were choosing answers to riddles they didn't even know they were being asked. Somewhere, someone was still alive.

Mark sat back down at his desk and waited for the cable to return.