The next day, Lucas was not in the mood for any bullshit. He had woken up earlier than he had intended to, and he had not been able to go back to sleep. Instead, he had tossed and turned in his bed for over an hour, trying and failing to focus his mind on getting back to sleep. The thing was, whenever he had centered his mind enough to approach unconsciousness again, the image of that girl…Brooke…popped into his mind again, causing him to grumble and turn over in his bedsheets, starting the whole process over again.

What had he done wrong with Valerie?! He wasn’t really thinking about the other male applicants who had accepted positions elsewhere — they were high-powered guys who could basically get jobs anywhere they wanted. But Valerie…well, yes it was true that she was just as bright and “high-powered” as the guys had been…but…but…

Lucas couldn’t bring himself to openly admit to himself that she had played him, rather than the other way around. He was so sure that he had impressed her, with his easy, confident demeanor, his professional questions, and even (he thought) his tactical acknowledgement of her blatantly obvious physical attributes. He had thought, a little smugly, that other interviewers would have just pretended like they couldn’t see how hot she was, and that she would see his thinly-veiled innuendo as a welcome and refreshing alternative to the stilted, stiff-upper-lip corporate offices she was probably used to.

Now Lucas saw that he had badly overplayed his hand, and had gotten burned. Or had he? Maybe it was something else about Braden, Inc. that Valerie hadn’t liked. Maybe it was just the whole feng shui of the place, so to speak — maybe she didn’t like the look of his coworkers…maybe Sophia had looked askance at her, or something…it would be just like Sophia, to intentionally deprive him of a morsel like Valerie. He tossed and turned some more…hell, maybe she didn’t like the look of the fucking paint on the wall — who knows? The point was that, for whatever reason, she had chosen another job. She had chosen not to take a job where she would be around him. It was impossible for Lucas not to feel jilted and rejected, but eventually, as he continued to lie restlessly in bed, he got himself to a point mentally where he had convinced himself that her decision to pick another job had nothing whatsoever to do with him personally.

With that conviction firmly chiseled into his mind, Lucas looked over at the clock. 5:43. He usually got up at 6 o’clock. It would be pointless to try and go back to sleep now. Grumbling some more, he lugged himself out of bed and stepped into the shower, trying not to think about how much the incoming work day was going to suck. He had exchanged emails with Brooke the day before, informing her not so much that she had “gotten the job,” but rather that she had been selected to work a one-month paid trial period with the company, and that her further employment would be contingent upon her performance, and how well she seemed to “gel” with the rest of the office.

Lucas soaped up his hair in the steamy shower; the scent of “Blue Musk” brand male shampoo began to permeate his bathroom as it mixed with the hot water vapor. He was positive that Brooke wouldn’t be staying with Braden any longer than a month. The girl literally had nothing going for her. Even her replying email was fraught with grammar and spelling errors, and even included some errant spaces, almost like she had leaned against the keyboard without realizing it.

‘Is she just, like totally clueless?’ Lucas asked himself as he soaped up his body with a lather. ‘Or maybe she has some kind of weird…I don’t know…disability or something? She’s just obviously not totally there. Air-headed.’

he had already resolved not to think too hard about the fact that the upper management of Dave, Bill, and the like, more or less had total control over what happened in his office, at least in theory. Lucas could continue to manage everything as he saw fit, so long as Dave…and Bill…and others even higher up, approved of his results. And over his career, his results had spoken for themselves so far. He had played an important role in the development of an impressive array of new software technologies. And now, well now…

‘Ah shit,” he thought to himself sullenly, stepping out of the shower and drying himself off with a clean white towel. ‘I’m gonna have to give this girl a fucking clearance code for the nanobots. Wonderful…just great.’

He couldn’t help but think that it was a pure liability, giving someone like Brooke an actual security clearance to something as under-wraps as the nanobot project. He had considered emailing Dave about his concerns, but had ultimately refrained, since he knew that any email to the contrary of Bill’s relayed orders would be seen as whiny, and perhaps even worse, insubordinate. Lucas looked at the mirror in his bathroom, which had completely fogged over during his shower. He could see the slight outlines of his dark shape toweling itself off, but nothing sharp or defined about his features; he was just a shape in the water vapor stuck to the mirror.

‘She’s not really that bad,’ he thought to himself as he stared indistinctly at his shape, moving his towel back and forth across his back. ‘Clearly unqualified, not a looker by any means…totally clumsy…not confidence…but it’s not like she’s gonna go blabbing out about our development secrets.’

Lucas actually chuckled out loud as he stepped over to the mirror, wiping out a clear oval of clear mirror from the fog, revealing his grinning face. She wasn’t going to do anything to risk the company firing her! She had to just be positively thrilled that she had managed to land the job in the first place! And of course, Lucas knew that she wasn’t going to have trouble showing everyone in the office, over the next month, that she had absolutely none of the qualifications to belong there — the last thing she was going to do was jeopardize her already-precarious position, surely! The girl certainly wasn’t that bright, but at least she had the good sense to be nervous around him!

Lucas could feel himself warming to this task of “training” Brooke the more he thought about it, and as he put on his clothes in his bedroom, he actually managed to trick himself into thinking that it was going to be fun, showing her how unprepared for this job she actually was. Even though he wasn’t going to enjoy looking at her, he could at least enjoy her surprised and humbled reaction when he showed her just how complicated everything was, just how high-powered everyone’s job was at Braden…just how intense and intricate their nanobot development had become. By the time Lucas had strapped in his seat belt and pulled out of the parking garage of his luxury condo complex, he was in a good mood. The first sip of his coffee that he picked up from the drive-thru only served to intensify his anticipation of this “training day.” There was nothing outwardly malevolent about Lucas’s approach — he was just looking forward to showing this girl what it was like to work in a “real” company. Even though Brooke was completely unattractive to him, she was still a girl…and as such, Lucas could still get a kick out of her humility.

Lucas strode out of the golden elevator on the 42nd floor of the skyscraper, and straight towards Sophia’s desk. She was usually the first one in the office, and even though he had talked himself into a good mood, he still wanted to give her a piece of his mind. At this point, he had convinced himself that she had been the reason why Valerie had chosen not to take the job at Braden. He peered around the open door to her office and saw her diligently typing away, her eyes going left and right rapidly as she looked at her screen. Sophia was around his age, in her mid-30s, and more or less looked her age, even though she was still quite pretty. Her dirty-blond hair was tied up in a half-bun, half-ponytail up on her head, looking slightly disheveled as usual. But there was something of that aesthetic that fit Sophia — she always looked like she had somewhere else to go in a hurry, but whenever she actually locked her light blue eyes on someone, it suddenly seemed like she was exactly where she wanted to be. She always wore essentially the same thing: a white blouse top, opened up down the middle a bit too much, showing more of her C-cup chest than was normal for an office woman (even in these times), and a fairly short black skirt that went down to around her mid-thighs, hugging her shape. Sophia was not particularly curvy, but she was not rail-thin either. In any case, she had well-formed legs that were always aided with the pump of her black 3-inch heels, whose shininess and polish always seemed to contrast with her otherwise haphazard and slightly bedraggled appearance. But Sophia was pretty enough to get away with it, at least as far as Lucas was concerned. Although they were long since finished romantically, he was always reminded, time and time again, of why he had been drawn to her before. It was an odd, confident, slightly hurried, and kinetic presence that she had. There was literally no one like her.

After staring at her for a couple moments, Lucas rapped his knuckles smartly on her door frame.

“What is it, Lucas?” Sophia asked, a little impatiently, without taking her eyes from her screen.

Lucas smiled; she always knew when he was coming, even when he tried to hide himself.

“Oh, you know, nothing really,” he sighed mildly, cocking his head as he examined his finely-trimmed fingernails. “Just thought I would drop in and say that I know you torpedoed that hire I had in the bag.”

Sophia’s eyes kept going left and right rapidly as she finished typing whatever sentence she was in the middle of. Lucas waited there for a few long seconds, feeling that the humor in his comment was quickly dissipating into the ether with each passing moment. Finally, Sophia stopped typing and looked up at him.

“Torpedoed your hire?” she repeated, looking straight at him from over her spectacles. “The fuck are you talking about?”

Lucas chuckled a little, stepping a bit into Sophia’s office as she continued to stare at him intently with those pale blue eyes. She certainly had a way of freezing people with her stare, that was for sure. But Lucas knew that he was on to something with her.

“Oh don’t feed me that, Sophia,” he said warmly. “You know what I’m talking about. That girl who came in a couple days ago…Valerie? You know? The blond bombshell?”

“Oh! Yeah I heard about her,” said Sophia mildly, her yes going back to her screen. “Heard all you guys slobbering to each other about her in the break room. Haha, yeah, it sounds like she dodged a real bullet here, let me tell you.”

“So you DO know about it, huh?” inquired Lucas accusingly, pointing at her with a triumphant grin.

“I heard that, despite your brilliantly-conducted interview, no doubt interspersed with clever insinuations, she got a job somewhere else. Heard all of the candidates got other jobs, in fact.”

Sophia stopped typing and rubbed her chin thoughtfully with her fingers, furrowing her brow in mock-contemplation.

“Hmmmm,” she mused, “Gee, I wonder what chased her away?”

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“Well it wasn’t my interview, if that’s what you’re implying,” said Lucas, dropping the humor. “It was YOU, wasn’t it? You nabbed her in the hallway, didn’t you? Told her to get a job someplace else?”

“Lucas,” laughed Sophia, once again going back to her screen, “I think it’s hilarious that you just assume that I was the mastermind behind this Ivy-league girl not taking a position here. She probably wanted to go somewhere where the management was a little…let’s just say younger.”

“Younger?” cried Lucas. “I’m 36! That’s still young!”

“Tell that to the 26-year old whiz from California who she got a job with instead,” laughed Sophia, now looking straight at Lucas again, just to enjoy his disappointment.

“What?” he asked, trying and failing to hide his surprise. “She got a job at Rubik’s, across town?”

“Oh yeah,” said Sophia. “She didn’t even bother to leave the city. How’s that for rubbing it in your face, old man?”

Lucas couldn’t help but laugh a little at Sophia’s counter; she certainly did know how to get at him and twist the knife. And he was still in a good mood, from his earlier pep talks with himself. But he couldn’t deny that the fact that Valerie had chosen to take a job at Rubik’s, the up-and-start software company headed by Preston Rubik, the young, brilliant “30-under-30” prodigy, was a blow to his masculinity. Lucas had seen a picture of Preston Rubik in a magazine and…well, he wasn’t just brilliant and ambitious. He was hot too.

“Aww, I go a little too far?” teased Sophia, her eyes dancing a little bit.

“No!” exclaimed Lucas, reddening a little as he smiled bashfully. It was impossible to hide anything from Sophia for too long. He knew she was calling him out, making fun of him, taking him down a peg…reminding him that he maybe wasn’t as much of a hotshot as he thought he was. It definitely irritated him somewhere inside, but…well, it was also still nice to play these little games with her. They needled each other often, with each attack carrying some real sting of truth, but without the real poison and toxicity that it once conveyed, when they had actually been romantically involved.

“Haha, well, you win some, you lose some,” said Sophia wistfully.

“Oh god, that reminds me,” said Lucas, checking his watch and starting to leave, “Gotta see if the new girl is on time. Spoiler alert: I bet she isn’t.”

“Aw, well, don’t be too hard on her Lucas,” said Sophia, going back to her screen. “I saw her file. Just treat her as a temp who could have a good experience here for a month, you know? Teach her something useful. Don’t drive her like she’s a real employee, ok?”

“But if I don’t push her, how’s she gonna learn?” Lucas shot back, raising his eyebrows as he left.

“Well, you’re Mr. Manager!” Sophia called out, chuckling.

“Oh niiice!” he retorted, and the interaction was over.

Lucas was pleased to realize that his surmise about Brooke had been correct: it was already three minutes after 8, and she had not yet turned up. Lucas put down his briefcase and sank down into his plush black leather chair, sighing as he did so. Maybe she wouldn’t even show up at all — maybe he wouldn’t have to deal with all of her clear inadequacies at all…maybe she would just…float away. And then he could tell Dave that she had been a no-show, and that he didn’t have time to entertain the whims of someone as unqualified and unreliable as she was. Maybe it would even be an opportunity for him to, very gently, tell those above him ‘I told you so.’

Still though, pragmatically speaking, it was going to make for an inconvenient day if he had to rearrange his schedule and send all those emails out. He woke up his computer and started answering emails, which at this point mainly consisted of other people in his department bouncing ideas off each other about their new nanobot technology. Within a couple minutes, Lucas had almost forgotten about Brooke, instead throwing himself headlong into the rich content of their new and promising technology.

There was no question that the nanobots they were developing at Braden were cutting-edge, and there was also no question that Lucas himself had been a key player in the development so far. That was why Sophia’s little stings didn’t really hurt so much — she knew, and he knew, that they were both part of something special, something that had the potential to revolutionize the way humans developed. The nanobots had worked so well in the lab rat hosts the previous year, yielding an array of impressive results: empirically-measured improvements in short-term memory, skin and fur complexion, reflexes, and eyesight. There was even good evidence, though not quite as easy to prove as the other attributes, that the nanobots acted as a mild anti-depressant. The human trials had just begun earlier that year, on informed-consent people who were already suffering from terminal illnesses, and aware of the risks. Unfortunately, the nanobots had nearly always killed their human hosts. There was lots of work that remained.

A few minutes later, Lucas happened to glance up from his computer screen. He saw an asymmetrical shape hovering in the doorway, and he started back in surprise, actually jumping back a little in his chair as it rolled backwards and hit the wall behind him.

“Huh!” exhaled Lucas in sharp surprise, realizing who it was. “Jesus! You…you startled me there!”

“I’m…uh…s-sorry, Mr. Miner,” stammered Brooke. “I…w-wasn’t sure what I was, umm, what I was supposed to do.”

“Well, a little knock would have been nice, for starters,” said Lucas, regathering himself as he pushed his chair back up to his desk. “And let’s make sure we get my name right, mmkay? It’s ‘Mineur,’ alright?”

“M-mineur,” repeated Brooke, blushing with embarrassment as she failed to get the “ur” just right.

“Mineur,” said Lucas, a little more emphatically. His eyes went over Brooke’s whole get-up, and he wasn’t the least bit surprised by what he saw: a baggy, wrinkled pale red blouse, that looked like it had been washed with the “white loads” about twenty times too many…a strange, almost Catholic-school-girl skirt, with dark green and navy stripes…no hips to speak of…and the same baggy black tights hanging on her skinny legs. At least she was wearing high heels, even though they looked about a size and a half too big. Her black hair looked just as unkempt and waxy as it had before.

“Mineur,” said Brooke, finally getting it right.

“Yes. Ok,” said Lucas, taking a deep exasperated breath and folding his hands in front of him on his desk. “Now, Miss…remind me of your last name again, please?”

“Pupoljak,” she said, smiling a little. “Y-you know, the Croatian — ”

“That…that doesn’t matter to me, ok?” said Lucas impatiently, waving his hand. “What I was going to say, Miss Pupoljak, is…I was going to remind you that this position is, for all intents and purposes a temp position. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Y-yes,” she said, staring at him a little blankly and blinking.

‘Wow,’ thought Lucas, ‘She doesn’t even know what “temp” means…or maybe she does…maybe she just looks like that all the time.’

“And, by nature of your contract here, which you have signed, you’ll be an employee at Braden for exactly one month. Your future employment beyond that month will be entirely contingent on your performance that you exhibit for the next thirty days. Does that make sense?”

“Y-yeah…I mean yes it does,” said Brooke, nervously crossing her feet and picking at the tips of her fingers.

“And let me just say, and I’m not meaning for us to get off on the wrong foot here, but again, let me just stress to you that when you show up…14 minutes late on your first day of work…well, let’s just say that it’s not an ideal way to start.”

“I’m s-sorry, really, I am!” said Brook eagerly, stepping forward awkwardly into Lucas’s office. “It just…uh…it t-took me ages to park, because, um…hehe, you know, I kind of forgot which level Braden employees park on, and — ”

“Well, just look at the signs,” said Lucas, shaking his head slightly as he looked up at this bumbling mess of a girl.

“I—I know, haha! I f-figured it out eventually…b-but then, uh…I left my bag in my car because I was n-nervous, and I had to go back, and uhh…”

“Ok,” said Lucas, holding up his hand, indicating that she should stop. “Whatever it was, Miss Pupo…Popol…oh hell, I’m just gonna call you Brooke, ok? Whatever the problem was this morning, Brooke, I don’t expect it to be repeated again tomorrow. Alright?”

“A-alright, y-yes…yes, sorry,” she said earnestly.

“That’s ok,” said Lucas, almost more to himself to her. “It’s all right. It’s just that…we do things professionally around here. And even though you’re a temporary employee, I still expect you to adhere to our standards. Sound fair?”

“Mmhmm!” nodded Brooke, now almost totally scarlet. For a moment, Lucas couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. This girl was a real piece of work — how had she managed to hold down an internship for months before? Where had it been? Macking…still though, Macking was respectable. it had been an unpaid internship though…that probably explained it.

“Ok, so…” said Lucas, “I need to finish answering some emails before we start.” He glanced down at the polyester white “briefcase” that Brooke was holding. What on earth was that thing?! It looked tacky as hell!

“I’m assuming you brought your laptop in today?” he inquired, peering up at her.

“Uh y-yes…yes I did,” answered Brooke, nodding her head eagerly.

“Oh alright, good,” said Lucas, feeling genuinely surprised that she had actually managed to plan that far ahead. “Well, I’m assuming that you’ve done some research into the special technology we’re developing here at Braden? Lots of the details are secret, of course, but you do know that we’re in the process of developing nanobot technology at the moment, don’t you?”

“Nano…bot technology?” asked Brooke uncertainly, straining her head forward a bit. The slight blemishes on her face became a little clearer to Lucas as she did so. His observations aside, though, he couldn’t believe that Brooke didn’t even seem to know what nanobots were.

“So…you don’t even know what nanobots are?” he asked, completely deadpan.

“Umm…uhh, no, not really,” said Brooke quietly. “Are they like, uhh…r-robots?”

“Uh…haha, um, yeah,” said Lucas, shaking his head incredulously. “They’re like robots…whooooo boy…ok, you know what, how about this? I answer these emails, and you sit over there in that chair, pull up “nanobots” on wikipedia, and see what you can learn in the next twenty minutes, mmkay?”

“Uh…o-ok,” said Brooke, clearly feeling like a fish out of water as she shuffled awkwardly over to the open chair and sat down. Lucas made wide eyes at his computer screen, as if saying ‘Are you seeing this girl!?’ and then settled back into answering his emails. It was going to be a long day.

Five minutes went by, and Lucas had again almost forgotten that Brooke was sitting in a chair in his office.

“Uhh..Mr. Min…Mineur?” came her timid voice all of a sudden.

“Yes?” asked Lucas, feeling irritated by the mere lack of confidence in her voice alone.

“Wh-what’s…what’s the wifi password?”