Riddles in the Dark

The last thing Elena said before walking out was that I'd become a sphinx—impassive, impossible to read, asking riddles I didn't even understand myself. She was right. I'd been sitting at this desk for three years, my soul eroding like limestone under wind, answering questions that meant nothing and asking none that mattered.

Now I stood in the server room at 3 AM, surrounded by the hum of machines that knew more about human connection than I did. Cables snaked across the floor like black vipers, a tangled web I'd spent years weaving. I should have been home. I should have been fighting for her. Instead, I was running diagnostics on systems that would outlast us both.

"You're still here?"

I turned. Marcus from IT leaned against the doorframe, holding two coffee cups. He looked as dead as I felt—eyes hollow, skin gray, the corporate zombie shuffle familiar and pathetic. We were all undead here, sustained by caffeine and dread.

"Couldn't sleep," I said.

He handed me a cup. "Elena called me."

The coffee burned my throat. "What did she say?"

"That you'd forgotten how to want anything. That she'd rather be alone than with someone who's already gone." Marcus set his cup on a server rack. "She asked me what your riddle was. What you were waiting for someone to guess."

The servers blinked at me in their patient, unblinking way. I thought about Elena packing her things, the boxes she'd left by the door. I thought about the sphinx at the Metropolitan Museum, how visitors walked around it, took pictures, moved on. How no one wondered what it had seen.

"I'm not waiting for anything," I said.

"That's the problem." Marcus picked up his coffee. "You're not running toward anything either. You're just... existing."

He left, and I stood alone in the blue light of the monitors. My phone sat on the desk—Elena's number still saved, still unanswered. I could call. I could run after her. I could finally ask the question that mattered.

Instead, I bent down and traced a cable back to its port, my fingers finding the connection tight and secure. The sphinx had eaten another traveler, and the riddle remained unsolved.