Kelvin Stanley performed a pirouette in front of his mirror and imagined, in an alternate universe, of the spotlight and Swan Lake.
Angela was disheartened to learn that she couldn’t manage people in the same way she managed her cables – with more than a couple zip-ties to get them to stay in position.
The owner of Coby’s Cones ice-cream parlour smirked as the latest global warming figures flashed across his computer screen. It was going to be a profitable future.
In a world first, a Chinese film director put to good use the near-three million surveillance cameras in her city of Shanghai to direct her first feature-length film. It won the People’s Choice award at Cannes and earned her a suspended jail term in her home country.
Pamela performed her meditation like she did with most things in life, with an empty head and a vacant look.
A hunched, gnarled, sun-baked man arranges loose-leaf tobacco from a grubby pouch onto a fresh rolling paper. The thin strips of tobacco leaf look like shavings from his thick brown hands.
The meeting that could have been an email that could have a been a direct message that could have been an in-person conversation that could have been nothing at all if the office drone had read an email properly in the first place.
It was a grey, post-holiday day. Gustavo locked himself out of his computer after entering his old, expired password too many times, and promptly took another three weeks’ leave.
As soon as she retired, Deb immediately dispersed with the concept of digital calendars. Years of the Outlook chimes, of reminders of upcoming meetings, had scarred her – a white-collared Pavlov’s dog. Her days would never again be broken up by neat, five-minute chunks.
Bubbly, bright HR rep Brittany wore a stained black hoodie on her daily bus ride, and mumbled to herself at random, just so no-one would sit next to her on the commute.
The crying may have started when Ken dropped his popcorn in the movie theatre, but it was sustained by the performance the lead actor was putting in on-screen.
The true test of the human intellect, waiter Byron found, was how quickly a table of ten or more could identify who ordered the food his arms were laden with. Most of the time it was blank looks and mouths opened in inquiring O looks.
The disconnect between the real products and the photoshopped ones on the McDonald’s menu finally made it all the way to the boardroom, where inflated projections and promises all came crashing down when the quarterly earnings were unwrapped (announced).
The commentary duo balanced each other out. One was raw emotion and had a high-pitched voice, and the other was pure statistics, whose balls had dropped when he was still in primary school.
‘Just hear those sleigh bells jingling. Ring-ting-tin-gl-ing too. Come on it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you,’ sang Bert idly, feet squeaking on the hot sand as he marched with his surfboard down to the water.
A narcissist was accidentally hired in lieu of an exorcist. The battle with the demon raged on for longer that anyone expected.