Snippets
It is my pleasure to cordially welcome you to the beginning of... Up Close and Personal.
The smells of coffee, sweat, and crisp computer paper permeated the cramped, airless room. There was one tiny, high window across from the door that could be forced open a crack but only in the worst heat of the summer, since the noisy traffic was apt to disturb the furious scribbler at work.
He sat in a stiff, uncomfortable office chair that, contrary to its advertising claim, did nothing for the tension in his shoulders. The desk was a little too small and dominated by an ancient, wheezing computer that had been crammed full down to the last byte and was constantly being upgraded. The spasmodic whirring of a fan mounted on the opposite wall accompanied the wheezing of the computer. A half-empty coffee mug perched on the edge of the mouse pad, and every spare inch was covered with manila file folders, pens, automatic pencils without any lead in them, and mounds and mounds of paperwork.
There was a dire lack of paper clips, and the stapler sat sadly neglected under a particularly thick sheaf of reports that had been rubber-banded together it had outgrown its usefulness when it had been forced, at an alarming rate, to regurgitate all its staples. So far, they had not been replenished, due to the absentminded neglect of the stapler's owner.
There wasn't much more space in the room, since the desk and the chair took up two-thirds of the space. The badly-stained carpet held splotches of coffee, white-out, and other miscellaneous substances...at irregular intervals, the rare visitor could catch glimpses of the serviceable navy-blue it had been at its purchase, which had to have been at least two decades ago.
The remaining third of the room was occupied by an overflowing garbage bin whose lid had been wrenched off and gone missing some time ago. Filled to the brim and overflowing with wadded balls of paper covered in emphatic, inky scribbles, it grudgingly shared its meager space with a potted ivy plant. Despite the lack of sunlight, the plant was flourishing and spread its vines throughout the room.
Occasionally, its crawling fronds were heedlessly trod upon, but it had become quite hardy during its time with its present owner. Without the plant's conversion of carbon dioxide into oxygen, it seemed almost a certainty that said owner would have perished some time ago. Miraculously, he remembered to water it regularly, and they had a mutually-beneficial relationship.
The man in danger of asphyxiation was struggling reporter Zackary... His emerald green eyes gleamed almost fanatically as he bent over the keyboard, his fingers moving at the speed of light, and he remembered the equation (from his high school days) to be c = 3.00 x 10^8. His mind was filled with a wealth of information, and on more than one occasion, this wellspring of facts had come in handy. He was currently working on an article concerning Aurelia Auritius, more commonly known as the moon jellyfish they had been spotted much more frequently than they should have been off the southern coast of Mexico.
The door creaked open, and a breeze strolled in with a second fair-haired man. With a cheerful grin, he pulled up a rickety stool that had been wedged into a corner, dumped its contents on the ground in a fairly organized pile, and did not seem the least bit perturbed at being ignored. "Zack," he began, only to be met with a mumble and a hand held up in protest. The other hand continued its furious typing, and its partner soon rejoined it.
Jadeite raised his eyebrows, peering a safe distance away at the nearly-smoking keyboard. He had seen Zack on deadline days before (he couldn't really discern the difference between a normal workday and a deadline day, actually), but this seemed to be one of his moody days. "Don't think so loud," he teased, "I can hear the genius sizzling the minute I step in this room."
With a flourish, Zack entered the last period on the document, saved it, and hit "print." He also popped the disks out of their drives; he was often accused of having OCD but only conceded the point when it came to his disks he insisted on having at least two copies of everything.
Wheeling around to face Jadeite (and nearly smacking his knee on the side of the desk for lack of maneuvering space), he retorted, "I think you're hearing the coffee maker down the hall. It underwent a spontaneous combustion today, and Maria had to douse it with the fire extinguisher."
His friend blinked, impressed by the latest development. Before he could comment, Zack's elation over the finished piece faded. He glared at Jadeite blearily with bloodshot eyes. "What are you doing here?" he asked suspiciously, struggling to remember if he had forgotten to meet Jadeite and the rest of their friends somewhere.
Jadeite smirked. "Well," he drawled, drawing out his words provokingly, "you missed Kunzite's wedding this Saturday, and we were short one best man."
"What?! Kunzite got married?!" In an incredible feat of movement that Jadeite had not thought possible of the human race, Zack sprang up, knocking his chair over in the process. After cursing at the pain in his kneecap, he proceeded to transfer his wrath from the desk to his friend. "You... I know I'm busy, but I wouldn't forget something like that."
"I hope not. But isn't the fact that I had you for a minute just a little disturbing?"
After he made a very rude gesture with his right hand, Zack righted his chair with a grunt of effort and sat down again. "If this is another let's drag Zack away from work!' day, go away."
Jadeite smirked. "Unfortunately, if you will not come to reality, reality must come to you: the world does not revolve around you, Zack. "
"You're deflating my ego even more than my boss does, and you're ruining the sense of triumph I was feeling before you walked in and made me smash my knee into the desk. So what do you want?" he demanded.
"A 2986 Orbiter, a house I'm not sharing with three others guys so moody I would swear they have PMS if...er, we'll skip that for now, shall we? and a date with Sailor Mars."
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