The Sphinx in Server Room B

Maya stood before the glass doors of Server Room B at 2 AM, her fourth vitamin D supplement of the day dissolving slowly on her tongue. The artificial lights of the office pyramid stretched upward above her—floor after floor of empty cubicles, a monument to productivity she'd helped build over fifteen years.

She wasn't supposed to be here. The sphinx protocol—the company's new AI security system—had locked everyone out after hours. But tonight, something had drawn her back. Maybe it was the running she'd been doing from her life these past months: the divorce papers sitting unsigned on her kitchen counter, the promotion she'd declined without explanation, the persistent feeling that she'd become a ghost haunting her own existence.

A flash of lightning split the sky outside, illuminating the server room's interior. There it was: the old terminal she'd programmed as a junior developer, still humming with the same quiet determination she'd once possessed. Before the mergers and restructuring and endless meetings that had slowly drained everything genuine from her work.

The sphinx's voice echoed through the corridor: 'What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?'

Maya laughed. A dark, genuine sound that surprised her. The riddle—so trite, so arbitrary. Just like everything this company had become.

'Human beings,' she typed back. 'From crawling to walking to leaning on canes as we age.'

'Access granted,'

But she didn't enter. Instead, Maya stood at the threshold, another flash of lightning painting her stark white against the dark. For the first time in years, she saw herself clearly—not as an employee or ex-wife or any of the roles she'd been running between, but as someone who still had time to choose differently.

She turned and walked away, leaving the pyramid behind her, the vitamin D pill finally kicking in as dawn began to light up the sky.