The Wellness Protocol

Mark had been dead for three years, or at least that's how it felt. He moved through the accounting department like a ghost, consuming spreadsheets and emitting polite nods, his soul quietly decomposing in cubicle 4B.

"Have you tried the new D3-K2 complex?" Elena asked, sliding across her desk. She was twenty-four, terrifyingly luminous, and treated life like a puzzle she could solve if she just found the right supplements. Her desk was a graveyard of vitamin bottles—orange peelers for existential dread.

"I'll add it to the rotation," Mark lied.

His actual rotation was: wake at 5:30, stare at ceiling until 6:30, commute, work, commute, stare at Netflix, sleep. He was thirty-seven and felt like a biological machine operating on outdated software. The vitamins were just performance anxiety in capsule form.

Then James called.

James, his oldest friend, who'd moved to Seattle five years ago and occasionally sent texts that seemed to come from another dimension. James, who'd been diagnosed with early-onset something-or-other that required increasingly aggressive interventions.

"They've got me on this new regimen," James said, his voice fuzzy through the phone. "I feel like a zombie, Mark. Like, clinically. I'm present but not HERE."

Mark stared at the vitamin bottle Elena had given him. ORANGE FLAVOR. 1000 IU.

"I'm taking these vitamins," Mark said suddenly. "All these fucking vitamins. Like if I just optimize my inputs, I'll finally start feeling like a person again."

James laughed, rusty and tired. "That's the zombie part, isn't it? We're all just trying to optimize the wrong things."

"What should we be optimizing?"

"I don't know," James said. "Maybe nothing. Maybe we're just supposed to be dead sometimes."

Mark took the vitamin. Orange dust coated his tongue. For a moment, he understood: the thing wasn't to fix. The thing was to let yourself be exactly as broken as you were, and maybe call your friends more often.

"I'm coming to Seattle," Mark said.

"You hate flying."

"I'll bring the vitamins. We can be zombies together."

James laughed again, and this time it sounded almost real. Mark placed the bottle back on his desk. Tomorrow he'd be dead again, but at least he wouldn't be dead alone.