The Corporate Pyramid Scheme

Marcus stared at the papaya on his desk, its orange flesh mocking him with reminders of weekends that used to mean something. In the break room, the TV murmured about a **baseball** game he'd once loved—before the billable hours, before he'd become another **zombie** shuffling between meetings in this glass **pyramid** of a building where ambition went to die.

"You look like shit," Sarah said, leaning against his doorway. She held a bottle of **water** like a peace offering.

"I feel like I'm decomposing alive," he admitted, accepting the water. "My father played baseball. Semipro. He used to say the game teaches you that even when you strike out, there's always another at-bat. But this?" He gestured at the spreadsheet glowing on his monitor. "This is just striking out forever."

Sarah's fiancé worked on the forty-fourth floor. The pyramid scheme of their corporate hierarchy—partners at the apex, associates like them crushed at the base—had claimed another victim. She'd stopped wearing her engagement ring three weeks ago.

"My mother used to cut papaya for breakfast," she said, apropos of nothing. "In the Philippines, it's supposed to be good for digestion. For getting things unstuck."

Marcus laughed, a dry sound. "We're not stuck. We're undead. Walking corpses in suits, moving paperwork around like it matters."

"Then let's be alive for one hour," she said. "There's a rooftop bar across the street. We could drink something that isn't coffee. We could talk about things that aren't cases."

He hesitated. The pyramid's walls were high, but for the first time in months, he felt thirsty—not for success, not for validation, but for something real.

"What's the worst that happens?" he asked. "We become zombies who remember what it feels like to want something?"

Sarah smiled, and it was the first genuine thing he'd seen in this building in years.

"Exactly," she said. "Now drink your water and pretend you're a person again."