Office Intrigue

It had been the worst week of Jo’s life.

On Monday, her little brother had puked in the kitchen and when she was cleaning it up, she found one of her favorite earrings nestled amongst the chunks. On Tuesday, she hit her mouth on the car door and cracked one of her front teeth. On Wednesday, she accidentally fell into her crazy scientist neighbour’s time machine and traveled 500 years into the future. And yesterday, she had spilled mustard on her best work trousers.

But today was Friday and she had high hopes for Friday because she was born on a Friday and she thought that that meant good luck for some reason. She wasn’t superstitious or anything, she was just a little quirky.

She was also optimistic for Friday because she had been successfully integrating into her new life in the future- as an office salesperson. In this new future, it was law that any business had to accept a new worker, due to the declining population of people who could open their eyes.

So there Jo was, sitting at her desk with all her new coworkers for a hard day’s work. After a few hours, her desk mate Bob looked up at her and said, “Hey Lydia, can you pass me that binder?” “Yeah,” said Jo, passing him the binder, Lydia being her new identity, as Jo Shaffer did not exist in this new future.

Suddenly, from across the room, another on of their co-workers, Frank, began to levitate up off his chair. Everyone in the office gasped and ran towards him.

“This is magic! How amazing!” they all cried as Frank drifted higher and higher. Jo however, was not impressed.

“He’s just floating in the air a little bit,” she thought. “I traveled through freaking time.” Jo grew more and more angry as her co-workers fawned over Frank, until she blew up.

“Want to know something that’s actually amazing?” she said loudly, turning everyone’s heads towards her. “I went through a time machine to get here! I was born 500 years ago!”

“Well of course,” replied Bob, gesturing to her face.

Jo turned to the window to see her reflection and saw she was indeed 500 years old.