The Glass Pyramid

Marcus stood at floor forty-seven of the glass pyramid, watching the goldfish circle its bowl on his desk. It had been three years since Elena left, taking their dog and the last of his ability to feel anything at all. The fish—stupid, resilient thing—kept swimming the same endless loop, and he wondered if it knew it was trapped.

The corporate headquarters rose in a pyramid of steel and glass above the city, each level a smaller circle of power, each floor a new tier of exclusivity. Marcus had clawed his way to the forty-seventh floor, and what had it bought him? A view of the city's gray sprawl, a goldfish for company, and the nagging suspicion that he'd become a zombie.

Not the walking dead kind from movies. The corporate kind. The kind that shows up every day, shakes hands, smiles in meetings, answers emails at midnight, and slowly forgets what it's supposed to feel like to be alive.

"Marcus?"

He turned to find Sarah from accounting standing in his doorway. She was maybe thirty, with eyes that still held something he recognized from another lifetime. "You coming to the presentation? They're starting in five."

"Be there," he said. "Just finishing something."

She nodded and left. He watched her go and remembered running—actually running—down city streets at dawn, before the pyramid, before Elena, before he learned that ambition was just another form of hunger that could never be satisfied. He'd traded that for corner offices and stock options, and now he couldn't remember the last time he'd broken into a sweat without it being from stress.

The goldfish surfaced, mouth opening and closing in silent bubbles.

Marcus pressed his palm against the cold glass. Forty-seven stories up, the wind would be fierce. He imagined what it would feel like to step through, to let gravity take what ambition had built so carefully.

Instead, he walked to the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor, suddenly desperate to see a real dog, to run until his lungs burned, to remember that once, he hadn't been a zombie at all.