The Riddle of Wires

Maya hadn't slept properly in three weeks. She moved through the office like a **zombie** from those old films she used to watch with her mother—before her mother stopped recognizing her, anyway. Her colleague, Ravi, called it 'corporate necrosis.' He'd point at her slumped form by the coffee machine and whisper, 'The living dead,' with that terrible kindness in his eyes.

The **cable** management beneath her desk had become a snake pit of blackened hope. Ethernet twisted around power strips like some desperate embrace, while HDMI and USB connectors tangled in knots she couldn't untangle even if she wanted to. Sometimes she lay on the floor at 3 AM, staring into that electronic abyss, wondering if the spiders had formed a civilization down there.

"What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"

The question came from Dr. Chen, her new therapist. She sat with perfect posture, hands folded, eyes unreadable. A modern **sphinx** guarding the parking garage of wisdom. Maya had googled the riddle afterward. The answer was 'man'—crawling as infant, walking as adult, leaning on cane in old age. But the question felt wrong somehow. The real riddle was: What walks on coffee at dawn, emails at noon, and wine at dusk?

At the office holiday party, slightly drunk on cheap Chardonnay, Maya found herself in the breakroom with Sophie from accounting. Sophie caught her wrist, turned over Maya's hand, and traced the life line with surprisingly gentle fingers.

"Your **palm** says you're going to live a long time," Sophie said. "But that doesn't mean you're alive."

The comment hung there like smoke. Maya pulled her hand back, heart hammering. Sophie's eyes were too knowing, too sad. Later, Maya would realize this was the first time someone had really seen her in years.

She quit her job the following Monday. The cable snake pit stayed behind. The corporate necrosis began to fade, slowly, like a bruise healing. Dr. Chen stopped asking riddles and started asking real questions. And Maya began to understand that the sphinx's puzzle wasn't about stages of life—it was about learning to stand on your own two feet, whenever you finally choose to wake up.