The Riddle of the Morning Commute

Maya felt like a zombie—really, the corporate kind, the ones that shuffled through open-plan offices with dead eyes and empty coffee cups, their humanity extracted in quarterly performance reviews. She swallowed her vitamin D supplement with tepid office water, the pill her only concession to self-care in a life that had become an endless series of spreadsheets and meaningless video calls.

Then she saw it: a sphinx in the conference room. Not the Egyptian kind—this was a woman named Helena from HR, perched on the mahogany table with an expression that said she knew everything about everyone's salary, their secrets, the desperate things they'd typed at 3 AM. Helena had that sphinx quality about her, ancient and impenetrable, surrounded by the wreckage of careers.

"I have a riddle for you," Helena said, not looking up from her manicure. "What walks on two legs at nine AM, crawls on all fours by lunch, and drags itself out the door at six like something that's been dead for hours?"

Maya should've made a joke about corporate structure or the zombie nature of modern work. Instead, she stood there in her sensible heels, staring at this sphinx of a woman who could destroy her with a single email, and felt something crack open inside her.

"Someone who forgot why they started doing this," Maya said softly.

Helena finally looked at her. Something shifted in those sphinx eyes—approval, maybe. Or recognition.

"The vitamin supplements won't fix it," Helena said, sliding off the table. "But the answer might." She paused at the door. "You're not a zombie, Maya. Zombies don't feel this tired."

Maya walked to her desk, past the rows of colleagues bent over their screens like worshippers at a grim altar. She opened her drawer, took out her vitamin C, and paused. Then she emailed her resignation letter instead.

The sphinx had given her something better than a job—she'd given her back the riddle, and finally, finally, Maya wanted to solve it.