Working in a cube farm doesn’t leave many opportunities for self-expression. No more than ten percent of any given wall can be covered, either with personal items or work-related paperwork—after all, what’s the point in having walls you can see through if people persist in blocking your view with nonessentials like the escalation phone list? But people are people, and people will always find a way to mark territory. Little toys, potted plants, even the occasional low-maintenance fish, they all have their place in the ecosystem of the office, allowing each cube’s resident to feel as if they have some control.

In my case, that control took the form of a picture of my cat, Seymour; a small potted succulent that had proven functionally unkillable, surviving three desk moves and an accidental week without water when I was out with pneumonia; and a retro motorized piggybank shaped like an off-brand Audrey II. It made a cute snapping sound when I fed it coins, and it never had more than fifty cents in its belly, to avoid tempting people to break it open in order to buy a candy bar.

And it was gone.

I stood there for a moment, looking at the place where it should have been, then looking to either side, in case I had somehow moved an eight-inch-tall chunk of plastic without noticing. No bank. I stepped into the cube and opened the drawers of the filing cabinet next to my desk. Sometimes people would hide things in there, thinking they were funny, or the custodial staff would move things during the cleaning process and forget to put them back again. No bank.

According to the clock on my computer, I had five minutes before the official start of my shift. That was five minutes before I would have to explain my tardiness to my managers. They were sympathetic people, for the most part, and accustomed enough to the socially awkward people who gravitated toward support work that they would probably understand when I said my bank had been missing. Of course, this would be the third time in a ninety-day period that the disappearance of a personal effect had resulted in my clocking in late. That could be a problem.

I don’t like problems. Problems spawn solutions, and solutions are almost always worse than leaving things the hell alone. Putting my purse carefully on my chair, I stepped out of the cube, back into the aisle. Everyone I could see was focused on their computer screen, but very few of them were on calls, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were watching me, waiting to see how I was going to react.