Outside the windows, the sky was clear, cloudless, and she could see all the way to the bay, the small dark shape of Alcatraz Island visible in the sea of blue space between two adjoining buildings. She found herself wondering what would happen if a major earthquake hit while they were up here. Would the building stand or would it collapse? If it collapsed, would they ride it down, squashing the floors beneath them, or would the structure topple over, sending them flying into space? More than likely, there’d be a random pattern of destruction, different areas on different floors that crumbled or remained intact, arbitrarily killing those who happened to have the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Morbid, perhaps, but at least it made the time go by.

She glanced once more around the room, at her coworkers and peers, and thought, not for the first time, that she didn’t belong here. She’d been hired by Automated Interface just out of college, had worked her way up the corporate ladder and had held her current position for the past five years, but she still sometimes felt like an imposter, a child playing dress-up who had somehow successfully fooled adults into believing that she was one of them.

Did she have anything in common with these people at all?

No. It was a fake plastic yuppie world she lived in, and it was one of the cruel tricks of fate that she happened to have an aptitude for this business, that she happened to be good at this job.

She’d grown up far differently, in a rural town south of the Bay Area, at the tail end of the hippie movement, and her parents had raised both her and Josh nontraditionally, teaching them a reverence for nature, emphasizing individuality, all the counterculture clichés. The obsession with appearances, the focus on finances and materialism that were so much a part of the lives of her peers were completely foreign to her. At the same time, she recognized the need to fit in, and she had no problem putting on the mask of conformity, buying the right clothes, ordering the right food, doing everything necessary to facilitate her created persona of successful businesswoman. It was why she was where she was today.