Riddles in the Dark

Elena had been dead inside for three years when the IT guy found her crying in the server room. Not literally dead, of course — that would have been simpler. She'd become a **zombie** of corporate life, shambling through meetings, nodding at presentations, her soul worn thin by the endless grind of quarterly projections and team-building exercises.

"Cable's loose," the technician said, confusing her tears with some practical concern. He was young, barely thirty, with curious eyes that actually saw her. "The network **cable**, I mean. That's why your terminal keeps dropping."

She laughed — a rusty sound, like a door unused for years. He reminded her of the **sphinx** she'd seen in Egypt during that lost summer before marriage, before the mortgage, before the slow erosion of everything she'd once been. The sphinx had watched her with ancient, knowing eyes, as if it understood that the riddle wasn't the thing itself, but the asking.

"What's your riddle?" she asked him now, surprising herself.

He paused, his hand on the doorframe. "What's the thing that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening — and spends the whole time wishing it had the courage to walk away?"

Elena felt something crack open in her chest, something calcified and painful and essentially human. Outside, the city hummed with millions of people pretending to be alive. Inside this room, with its blinking lights and tangled wires, she finally understood the real answer: it wasn't about the number of legs you used, but whether you chose where you walked.

"Tomorrow," she said. "I'm leaving tomorrow."

The sphinx in Egypt would have approved. The dead thing inside her finally lay down and died, making room for something else to begin.