“Your beard is telling me you care about the planet,” the blonde with the clipboard said.

Sylvester just kept walking, and he tried not to sneer.

He did love the Earth, but not in the trivial way she did. He loved it all, loved it down to the nickel-iron core; wondered, at night, if the center really was a high-pressure crystal, perhaps a gigantic diamond.

Her love, or concern, he expected, was only for the skin of the planet, the puddles that were the seas, and the froth of atmosphere above; and perhaps the cuter quadrupeds.

People, he thought, are so shallow.

The crowds at the corner, waiting for the pedestrian scramble, had him asking himself if you could divide people by class and politics simply by observing their coffee cups cross-referenced with their shoes.

Probably.

What Sylvester especially loved about this particular planet was the insatiable hunger of the mantle, sucking whole continents down into its gullet, eon after eon. Melting and spewing them, endlessly. That was power. That was dedication.

Sylvester’s beard was telling him that he lacked power and lacked dedication. Too lazy to shave, too poor to be shaved by others.

These were not the thoughts to be having today, when today called for courage. But his beard was calling him a loser, saying he should have seen this coming, labeling him a stupid idealist who could not hold a job.

What Earth’s mantle didn’t consume would be ground to dust and washed or blown away.

Halfway up the block, now.

The panhandlers never hang out in front of the jewelers. This section, however, was one of their favorite stretches of sidewalk. Near the bar, the ice cream, the lottery/tobacco place. Panhandling wasn’t an industry he supported, but it might be useful to know how much they took in each day, since this could be him in a couple of weeks.

Another thing he loved about the planet was how it brushed off adversity. Burning atmosphere? No problem. Total iceball? Shrug. Dinosaur-killing impacts? What are a few zit scars?

A whole Mars-size planet had walloped it, for crying out loud, and old Earth just dusts itself off, spits, swallows, and gets on with it.

That thought brought him into the office, where he didn’t bother to stop by his already empty locker. He’d seen to that on Saturday, just in case.

He’d taken home his photos and some mementoes that night, as well, but now he finished the job, on the assumption that he’d never see this cubicle again.

“Silly, my man. How’s the Brightfield audit going?” George asked, not even bothering to look over the cubicle wall. George was almost always a disembodied voice.

“You should be getting that data packet,” he checked the screenclock, “about three minutes ago.”

Thumping of keys. “Ah, here it is.”

Sylvester finished zipping up his bag.

“Can you see your way,” said the George voice, “to starting the paperwork for K7? We need to — “

“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he said. “Meeting with the boss.”

Which technically wasn’t true, but it was about to be.

He knocked on his supervisor’s door jamb and stepped in, uninvited.

“I’m busy,” she said.

“Then I’ll keep it short,” he said. He sat, uninvited. “I got my pay statement on Friday. It doesn’t list any of the overtime — “

“You know we don’t authorize overtime on these projects.”

“But you expect us to pull it, which is illegal,” he said, having a little trouble with his voice.

She gave him a Hard Look. “If you’re going to get all technical on us, we’ll need to part ways.”

“Understood. My pay rate also doesn’t match my actual contract — “

“I believe I explained — “

” — and doesn’t match what you told the State. Which is illegal.”

The Hard Look was getting harder. “Now see here. You signed off on our pay policies, so if there’s any question of legality, you’re part of the problem.”

“Understood,” he said. He’d practiced the next bit over and over, but he studied the little decorative pencil sharpener on her desk while he gathered himself. It, the sharpener, was a Stuka dive bomber, without insignia. He could not see any sign of wooden pencils.

Then he said, “Also, Saturday, I was finishing the Brightfield thing, and since I was alone here, I had to access the data directly. I see that we’ve been breaking cash transactions into smaller bundles, under the reporting limits. Which is illegal. And that we are actively falsifying asset evaluations.”

“Your point?”

“Which is a whole series of felonies.”

“What is it, exactly, that you expect me to tell you?” she said.

He hadn’t missed that she had tapped the Security button.

He took a deep breath. His beard was trying to tell him several pointed things, but he wasn’t listening.

“Actually, I was just wondering what you would say.”

He got up, and let the pseudo-cops escort him from the premises.

So no, he would not be starting the paperwork for K7.

His beard was doing the silence thing that said Did I tell you? Do we need to roll tape here?

– Timons Esaias

Author’s Note: The opening line was copied into my notebook verbatim – once I got to a coffee shop where I could write it down – from life. The setting details are from the business block of Forbes in Squirrel Hill, and the premise is based on a young man who was walking that block and who looked to be having a really tough day. The way we distract ourselves and spur ourselves in the face of a hard decision has always fascinated me. So.