The Last Pyramid Scheme

The water cooler hummed—that particular frequency of white noise that fills the silence between meaningless conversations. Sarah stood there, spinning a vitamin D tablet between her fingers, watching the corporate zombies shuffle past with their dead eyes and clutching coffees like lifelines.

"You look like hell," Mark said, appearing beside her. "Been taking your vitamins?"

She swallowed the pill dry. "I'm fine. Just another day at the pyramid."

The office was arranged in a literal pyramid of desks—upper management at the top, the rest of them cascading downward like forgotten ambition. She'd reached the third tier from bottom after six years. Some called it success. She called it slow death.

That night, she sat on her floor surrounded by cable management strips and ethernet cords, rerouting her entire entertainment system for the third time that month. Her therapist called it compulsive behavior. She called it the only thing in her life she could actually control.

Her phone buzzed. Another message from Greg: "We need to talk about us."

They'd been talking about "us" for three months. Greg wanted commitment. Sarah wanted to feel something—anything—besides the hollow ache of existing through another perfectly adequate day.

The cable knotted under her fingers. She yanked it free.

Tomorrow, she decided. Tomorrow she'd walk into that glass tower and climb to the top of the pyramid. Not for promotion. Not for recognition. She'd finally find out what the executives actually *did* up there, or she'd discover they were just as hollow as the rest of them.

Maybe she'd quit. Maybe she'd finally say yes to Greg.

Sarah crawled into bed, vitamin still sour on her tongue, and dreamt of water—drowning in it, floating in it, becoming something fluid in a world that had turned entirely to stone.