08:00. Monday, December 4th, 2023. Alexis’s Condo.
Alexis wanted to take a personal day. She still wasn’t over everything that had happened to her yesterday and wanted some time to sort out her feelings a bit. As any reasonable person might in her position.
However, this was no easy task because her boss, Lia, was on vacation. Personal days usually had to be approved. So Alexis checked her contract, but all it said was that it had to be approved by her boss or their designee. So she wasn’t sure what to do.
And when you aren’t sure about your contract, you go to your union steward.
Her steward was Aabria. At first this had confused Alexis because Arabia’s official title was the ‘Human Services Assistant’. It was after learning that they were separate from the town’s Human Resources and learning more of the kind of work they did, like helping residents navigate social services, that Alexis thought it made perfect sense that Aabria was the union steward.
So Alexis called up Aabria.
“Heyyyy Aabria, I want to take a personal day, but my boss is out of town. What should I do?” Alexis asked, trying to not sound completely depressed.
“Hope everything is alright, did Lia leave you an email? If not, you can probably ask the Labor Relations Director. You have her email, right?” Aabria responded.
“Yeah I do. And don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Might even have a good story to tell you after I process it a bit.” Alexis said.
“Okay, hope to hear it when you are ready to talk about it.” Aabria said
She started to type up the email, but she wasn’t sure what to put as her reason for needing it. If it was Lia, she would just say ‘mental health’ but she figured since this was going to someone she didn’t know too well she wanted to make sure it got approved.
But she couldn’t be expected to explain that she had almost died and wanted time to relax, right? She decided to keep it vague and say that a very distressing event happened in her life and she would need the day to deal with it.
Her email was given a response promptly: denied.
The Labor Relations Director explained in her professional, but terse, email that Lia had indeed marked her as her designee. And though the ordinance which served as the foundation for the Telekinetic Affairs Commission specified they could request assistance from other municipal agencies, Alexis’s own contract stipulated that she could be denied a personal day if Alexis’s absence could cause undue strain.
And since Alexis taking the day off would leave no one available if a resident wanted to reach the Telekinetic Affairs Commission, and the Labor Relations Director didn’t want to pull resources from other places on such short notice, she was denying the request for a personal day.
Which was, yes, all logic that Alexis could follow, and was built on premises that she even knew for a fact was true. Still she was a bit disappointed.
She had the right to appeal it but she couldn’t see the point. But the good news was that the whole experience had actually already taken her mind off the events of Friday anyway.
Screw it, if I can’t take the day off, I may as well do a 180 and try to bury myself in my work.
Alexis even decided that because she had plenty of time to still get ready, she would even go to work in person. So she left her computer on the couch still open to her email and went to the bathroom to get ready.
She stripped off her pajamas, and hopped in the shower. She closed the curtain, but left the door open so that the steam wouldn’t fog up the mirror, one of many perks of living alone.
While in the shower though, she couldn’t help but wonder about what she even saw yesterday. A psychic powerful enough to destroy a car like that shouldn’t have a range long enough to be out of sight. So was the user nearby? Maybe inside one of the other cars? And what was even the motivation?
She also wasn’t sure what she should even do about it. She didn’t see the value of going to the police, and figured that whoever had their car ripped apart would probably end up doing it anyway. Wait, should I be worried that the cops will come after me for this?
It was pretty obvious to Alexis that she had no means or motive to be able to do it. Heck, she even had the receipt for how much it cost to replace her car’s window dated for the day after it happened. But if there was a camera that I didn’t see, that would place me at the scene of the crime, making me the only suspect.
And if she was somehow convicted, it could be alleged that she lied during her registration to deliberately receive a lower danger level. Which would be considered fraud.
She let these thoughts run in her head a bit until the steam of the shower was getting a bit too much for. She turned off the water and wrapped herself up in a towel. But when she opened the curtain she realized why the air had felt a bit off. Man, I forgot to leave the door open.
The room was super foggy, so she went to wipe the mirror though. When she did she saw that it had cracks in the top left corner. Okay, that is weird.
She didn’t freak out though, instead she grabbed her phone and searched for an explanation.
It turns out this could happen for a lot of reasons, one of which was thermal stress. This made the most sense to her because the door being closed meant the bathroom was hotter than usual. Also, she got the mirror from whoever had lived in the condo before so she figured it was probably pretty old anyway.
With at least one mystery solved, she didn’t have much time left to get ready, so she just used the mirror in her room to do her makeup instead.
Alexis didn’t like to wear a lot of makeup, but when she was going out she usually liked to have a bit of eyeliner with pretty subtle wings. Mascara usually made her eyelids feel funny so she skipped on that.
She had more clean clothes available than normal because she had to do laundry on Thursday to have clothes ready to wear on Friday for the presentation. So at least she had that going for her.
She put on a white button up shirt and some black dress pants which was her go-to. She tried to make things easier for herself by not varying up her choices in outfits. But she did understand that society preferred women to have a bit of variation, so to add a bit of color she put on a light pink newsboy cap and a matching trench coat.
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The color of the hat and the trenchcoat went pretty well with her hair color, which she sometimes described as auburn or brown, but was so dark and reddish that it almost looked burgundy. The pinks of the outfit really highlighted that, she thought.
Once she was dressed and ready, she grabbed her keys and went to the couch where she had left her laptop and bag.
“Shit my keyboard!” Alexis shouted. Her external keyboard was completely broken in half, right in the middle where the ‘h’ key was. She had typed her email using the laptop’s native keyboard, she must have sat on the external one without realizing it. She was running late to work though and didn’t have much time to think about it. She unplugged the keyboard and stuffed the laptop in her bag. She would just have to get a new external keyboard later.
When Alexis got to her car, she surveyed the recent repair. It looked great. Her mom, dad, and Jen had all been busy but thankfully there was a business that had onsite glass replacement in town. They even handled it all that day.
Still had to pay a pretty penny. She probably could have gotten her insurance to cover it, but they would probably make her go to the cops which she already had decided she didn’t want to do.
Better to just eat the cost anyway and not have to go through the trouble.
As Alexis drove to work, she felt bad for whoever had their car destroyed, even if deep down she was secretly a bit relieved it hadn’t been hers. Paying to repair a window out of pocket was one thing, but having to buy a whole new car because of some insane psychic? Definitely not.
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09:10. Monday, December 4th, 2023. Harmon Town Hall.
She got to work ten minutes late. Alexis tried to justify it to herself because she was in person!
Aabria seemed relieved when she saw her, which Alexis was a bit touched by.
“Alexis, didn’t expect to see you this morning. I thought you were taking a personal day?” Aabria asked.
“Yeah, uh, I got denied.” Alexis replied.
“Oh honey, that Heather can be a real B-I-T-C-H sometimes.” Aabria said, spelling out the letters in ‘bitch’. It was nice to have someone mad on your behalf sometimes.
“It’s fine Aabria. I actually had the whole weekend to get over it, I was just being a bit of a baby. Thanks for looking out though.” Alexis said.
“Of course, anytime dear.” Aabria said.
They chatted a bit about their weekend, which ended up being a bit more difficult for Alexis considering all she did was get her car’s window replaced and watch anime. She didn’t like talking about anime at work. If she mentioned the car thing she was worried Aabria would ask a follow up question and Alexis still didn’t feel ready to talk about what happened yet.
Alexis managed to avoid the question by talking about how her recent presentation went, and how Selectman Sobol had offered her to give a similar presentation to a collection of local businesses.
“Ivan, that ol’ jerk. I’ve worked for this town for 12 years and have never met anyone more ruthless.” Aabria said.
Aabria was basically obligated to feel that way about him being the union steward and most likely involved in some of the negotiations with the town.
“He actually wasn’t that bad to me. He was pretty polite. You think I shouldn’t follow up on his offer?” Alexis asked. It wouldn’t be hard for Alexis to fake forgetting to do something since she frequently actually forgot to do many things.
“No, definitely do. If you can stay on his good side, maybe he will spare you come budget season.” Aabria said.
“Noted.” Alexis said.
For Harmon, ‘budget season’ would begin in January and end sometime in June. And Aabria was right, it would definitely help to have the person most likely to suggest making cuts on their side. Maybe the offer was even some sort of test? Like a ‘you scratch my back I scratch your back’ kind of thing?
There was also the partisan aspect of it to consider, currently the Select Board was majority conservative, with Selector Goodman in the minority by a slim margin. And it had been that way for years. Officially, Goodman was just their liaison, but he had also been the one who got the ordinance passed in the first place. Back then he had help from the majority leader, but he had decided to not run for reelection and was replaced last November. So Alexis wasn’t really sure what the plan was.
She decided it was best to follow up.
She continued her conversation with Aabria for a bit before having to stop when she got a call. It was Selector Goodman.
“Hey Alexis, how are you doing this morning?” Selector Goodman asked.
“Good, good. How about yourself?” Alexis responded.
“Great, super happy that last Friday was a success. Thanks for taking one for the team, I know they didn’t make it easy for you.” Selector Goodman said.
It was nice for him to say that, but it still didn’t help her feel any more clean.
“Uh, thanks.” Alexis said.
“Of course! Anyway, I had something I wanted to ask you about. I was gonna mention after the event but you gave me the ol’ irish goodbye after it was over.” Selector Goodman said.
“Yeah, sorry about that, I was a bit at my limit when it came to social interaction.” Alexis said.
“No problem at all, looking after your mental health is always important and looks different for everyone.” Selector Goodman said.
She was happy that she could be honest with him about her wellbeing, even if he did talk about it like he was a wellness influencer. Like, I wasn’t ‘looking after my mental health’, I just have social anxiety.
“So… What was it you wanted to ask me about?” Alexis asked.
“Right! I took some pictures of the event and was wondering if you want me to send it to you so you could post on the commission’s Sharebi page.” Selector Goodman said.
Sharebi (pronounced Share-bee), was a site used exclusively for old people to post photos and link articles. Which meant of course, it was the best way for small towns like Harmon to be able to connect with the people who always remember to vote. Maintaining it was Alexis’s job, as was taking pictures of events the commission was involved in.
Though, one could forgive her for not remembering too this last time considering she was the one giving the presentation.
Posting photos though meant people were going to probably see her give a presentation to cops, which was not something she was enthusiastic about. But she had a plan for that.
“Okay, send them over. Monday mornings are usually the best time to make sure a post gets seen anyway.” Alexis said.
“That’s great to hear!” Selector Goodman said.
After that the conversation wrapped up nicely. With that out of the way, Alexis was finally able to grab a cup of coffee from the break room and could settle in for the day.
She opened up her laptop and logged in, the screen displaying her email client from when she had received the email from Heather the Labor Relations Director. The cursor flashing inside the box where she could write a reply.
That’s strange. There is just the letter ‘h’ in the box. I know I was never planning on replying since sending the one email was socially taxing enough. So did it happen when I sat on the keyboard?
But that didn’t make sense to her, because if it had been then it wouldn’t have been just one letter, it would have been a full key smash. But that got her thinking about when she even sat on the keyboard in the first place. She dismissed it earlier because she had to head out the door, but it was weird that she would have sat on it and not noticed. And for that to break it right down the middle. Down the middle, where the ‘h’ key was.
She thought about how weird it was that she would forget to leave the bathroom door open. She always left it open. But then she saw that the mirror had cracked and she started to forget to think about how weird that was.
Then she thought about Friday. She never saw the person who destroyed that car. Just the effects. And it was weird she wouldn’t be able to see them when the range for a talent that strong couldn’t be that long.
But if the user had a way of always keeping themselves unseen. Then they could use their talent anywhere.
Alexis stood up fast. Her eyes wide.
Like say, in someone’s house.