Terminal Velocity

The coaxial cable had been fraying for months, its exposed wire mocking me from the corner of the living room—much like my career at Apex Solutions, where I'd spent fifteen years climbing a pyramid that turned out to be a tomb.

Another Tuesday night, another baseball game flickering on screen. The Yankees down by three, eighth inning. I'd stopped caring about the score around the same time I stopped caring about the quarterly reports, though my body still performed the motions: wake at six, subway at seven, elevator to forty-third floor at eight. By nine, I was already a zombie—not the brain-eating kind, but something worse: the kind who still had teeth but had forgotten how to bite.

Susan had left three months ago. "You're not living," she'd said, packing her cable-knit sweaters into cardboard boxes. "You're just existing between weekends."

She was right. I'd become part of the corporate pyramid scheme, the middle management that keeps the structure stable while crushing everyone beneath it. The guys at the top? They got to swing for the fences. The rest of us just tried not to get cut.

The baseball pitcher wound up, threw something beautiful and unhittable. Strike three. The crowd roared through tinny speakers. I reached for the remote, my finger hovering over the power button, and finally—finally—pressed it.

The screen went black. For the first time in years, the room was silent.

Tomorrow, I'd walk into that glass tower and tell them what pyramid scheme really meant. I'd take the buyout, the severance, whatever they called it this quarter. Maybe I'd drive west. Maybe I'd buy a glove and find a pickup game.

The cable sat there, dead and harmless. I stood up, stretched muscles that had forgotten how to move properly, and went to the window. The city lights stretched out like a field of diamonds, and somewhere in that darkness, someone was still playing ball.