A philosopher, a psychologist, and an extraterrestrial walk into a chocolate bar …. Jass Richards

a tear near the top corner and leaned in perilously because one of its shiny silver supports was broken—Jane Smith was focused on the screen of her laptop. Not the screen of her desk computer.

      It was a dark and stormy night, she’d typed. Which meant that the program had failed again, she added. Then stopped. Don’t storms, by definition, necessitate dark? Or at least cloud cover? Is there any kind of storm that happens on a sunny day? A wind storm. Wind happens without cloud, doesn’t it? And magnetic storms. And solar storms. No, they’d happen in outer space, where it’s—no, wait, the sun’s right there. Always shining. So why is it dark in outer space? She pondered that for a while, then moved on. ‘Night’ by definition necessitates dark. That was the bigger problem.

      No, the bigger problem was that such sloppy work, work that opened with such obvious redundancy, got published. Life was so not fair.

      Though of course ‘dark’ could just mean there was no moon.

      She retyped the first sentence: It was a relatively dark and stormy night. Then totally changed the second one.

      “Ready to go to lunch?” Spike bounced into Jane’s cubicle.

      Jane jumped a little, because she hadn’t seen or heard her coming, grinned, because she was always happy to see her, then looked pointedly at a huge clock hanging on the wall. Because it was 10:00.

      “Good point,” Spike said. “So we’ll go in ten minutes.”

      “Much better.”

      Spike cast about for something to do for ten minutes—

      And then it occurred to Jane. “Hey, why aren’t you—” She looked at her intently. “You did something, didn’t you.”

      Spike was always staging “Moments of Truth”. She’d record them and then upload them to YouTube.

      Spike shrugged, then perched herself on the corner of the desk.

      “What did you do?” Jane asked, in the tone one uses to reprimand an incorrigible terrier whose tail is wagging.

      “Oh, nothing.”

      She waited.

      “I turned the corporate goldfish pond into a reflective pond.”

      Jane thought about that. “In all three senses of the word?”

      Spike thought about that. “Yes.”

      “Good for you!” They high-fived. Jane would watch the video later.

      “So who are you today?” Spike changed the topic, looking for a nameplate somewhere on the desk. Then realizing that only desks in corner offices have nameplates. Hm.

      “Cynthia Lewis,” Jane said. Not that it mattered.

      “And what does Cynthia Lewis do?”

      “I haven’t figured that out yet. It’s only—10:02.”

      “But it’s only 10:02 on Thursday. Haven’t you been Cynthia Lewis since Monday?”

      “Good point.” Jane thought about that. A little.

      “Maybe she just sits here,” Spike suggested. “In which case, you’re doing an excellent job!”

      Jane grinned again. “But it wouldn’t necessarily be ‘just’. Being can be doing.”

      “You’ve been reading Sartre again. Or Heidegger.”

      “Chodorow,” she corrected. “And Rachels. You know … if you give someone a lethal injection and they die, that’s active euthanasia, because you’ve done something, but if you withhold food, that’s passive euthanasia, because you’re not doing anything. Supposedly.”

      “But they still die.”

      “Exactly. So even by not doing, by just being, you’ve done something.”

      “Cool.” Spike liked that.

      She looked at the clock then. It was not yet 10:10. “So is Cynthia a pregnancy or a nervous breakdown?”

      “Or?”

      “Good point.”

      It still wasn’t 10:10. “How’s the novel coming?”

      Jane grimaced as she turned her laptop so Spike could read the screen.

      It was a relatively dark and stormy night. Even the jello was scared.

      Spike laughed. “I like it!”

      “Ah!” A Very Important Man had appeared at the cubicle, looking friendly and patronizing. “Just the girl I’m looking—”

      “Excuse me?” Spike said to him, surreptitiously reaching into her pocket to record. “Does she look like a child?”

      Jane grinned at Spike, then looked at the man, waiting for his answer. It was a very good question.

      “I beg your pardon?” The man turned from Jane to Spike, surprised to be addressed, let alone interrupted, in that way. Especially by someone who looked like Spike.

      “Not my pardon you should be begging,” Spike replied. Then repeated, “Does she look like a child?”

      The man didn’t understand her point. So he ignored her. Go figure.

      “Look”—he turned back to Jane—“I need those financial reports—”

      “If you can’t tell a child from an adult,” Spike commented, “you should not have access to financial reports.”

      “What?” The man was confused.

      “The word ‘girl’ means ‘female child’.”

      “Oh excuse me,” he said insincerely. “You’re just the woman I’m looking—” He knew as soon as he said it that it was worse. No, wait a minute, how could that be worse than a grown man looking for a girl? Okay, now he was really confused.

      “Who are you?” he said to Spike, even more irritably.

      Jane grinned.

      “I’ll tell you who I am if you tell me who the hell you think you are!”

      “I need those copies by 10:30,” he said, turning back to Jane again.

      “No,” Spike corrected him. “You want—better yet, you would like—those copies. Please.”

      The man left, clearly angered. But he’d be unable to articulate why exactly.

      “10:30!” he shouted back.

      Spike waited a moment.

      “So have you found the photocopier yet?”

      “No,” Jane replied, ruefully.

      “Have you looked?”

      “No!” she replied, indignantly.

      Spike grinned. Then looked at the clock. 10:09.

      “You know,” Jane said, thoughtfully, “I don’t even think he’s my supervisor.”

      “He’s a man, you’re a woman, by definition …”

      “Yeah,” Jane said. Sadly.

      “Okay, time for lunch!” Spike announced and popped off the desk.

      Jane saved her work, backed it up to the permanently-plugged-in mini flash drive, then closed her laptop and put it in her bag. She took two steps after Spike, then stopped and went back to her desk. She moved everything from the inbox into the outbox.

      “Time for lunch!” she agreed.

      And the two of them left the building.

      “Hey, Jane,